Rick Mulhauser answers a complicated question with stark simplicity: “Because it's needed. It takes drastic measures to reclaim drastically troubled kids.”

        His “drastic” measure is Youth Opportunities United (YOU) and its Youth At Risk (YAR) program, a 12-year-old intervention program designed to transform scared, angry, aggressive kids into responsible, contributing young citizens.

        It does it with a two-pronged attack:

From left are Holly Sowels of Wyoming, executive director of YOU Foundation, Rick and Cynthia Mulhauser and (seated) Kevin Forte of Mount Healthy, a graduate of the program. (Mike Simons photo) | ZOOM |

        An after-school program where kids 14-19 meet with adults for learning, counseling and enrichment.

        The deal here, Mr. Mulhauser says, is it installs caring adults in the lives of kids who haven't always had caring adults around.

        Participants are paired with a “committed partner” who's a mentor and then some.

        It's that “takes a village thing.”

        Prong two is YOU's signature program, an intensive, seven-day “extreme” week where up to 50 kids are bused somewhere rural — last year it was a camp deep in far eastern Ohio — and spend a week with facilitators who lecture, counsel, coax, build, fortify, frighten and challenge in classroom sessions, then scare the daylights out of them in a series of physical challenges similar to those scary Outward Bound programs.

        It takes three trained facilitators and more than 100 volunteers to pull it off.

        “But it works. You see them hostile, angry and aggressive when the week starts. But the end, so many of them are different people.”

        YOU hasn't had the money or manpower to track kids who have been through the experience locally, but a study of the same program in Oakland found drug involvement decreased 33 percent, crime decreased 50 percent, truancy dropped 75 and hours worked increased 550 percent (and no, that's not a typo).

        Mr. Mulhauser, 57, is president of the YOU board and one of its founders.

        He spent 28 years in the insurance business, then retired four years ago to spend time with his new wife Cynthia, 50. Today, they live in Indian Hill with his two and her three children, ages 17-24, when they're in town.

        And he's out of retirement. Earlier this year, he came out to run a small company that manufactures hot water heaters.

How it came about

        But YOU is where his heart lies. It was born in 1990 when he and nine others in a self-improvement seminar had to do a group project.

        They had heard of the Breakthrough Foundation, a West Coast group that staged these “extreme” weeks for at-risk youth.

        “We decided to bring it here as our project,” Mr. Mulhauser says, “and at the end decided to follow through and form a foundation to go on with the work.”

        Initial funding came out of the pockets of the 10 founders with help from corporations, private citizens, the city and a couple foundations.

        It has been going strong ever since, though financing is always a problem.

        So is image. Cynthia, a property management consultant, “never heard of the program until I met Rick. After he told me about it, I said "Wow, why don't more people know about this?'

        “I made it my mission.”

        Today, Cynthia, an experienced fund-raiser who has thrown dozens of benefits for arts groups, is vice president, secretary, treasurer and chief fund-raiser, making her something of a village all her own.

        Right now, she's wrapped up finalizing plans for YOU's first major fund-raiser, a $125-a- head '50s party at Coney's Moonlite Pavilion. Swingin' 'n Cruisin' at Coney is antique cars, cocktails, dinner, dancing and poodle skirts at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.

        “We're hoping to make enough money to keep us going, but we're also hoping to build awareness of YOU.”

Teamwork and trust

        Money indeed. Participants, referred by courts, probation officers, schools, churches and social service agencies, pay nothing for the program. But it can run $5,000 a child for housing, food, transportation, facilitators salaries and the outdoor course set-up.

        Harrowing course, we might add. Participants must climb a ladder and fall off backward, trusting the other kids to catch them. They have to climb a 10-foot pole and stand on the top and then jump several feet to a trapeze contraption, trusting colleagues to catch them if they miss.

        “It's all about teamwork and trust,” Mr. Mulhauser says. “In the classroom session, facilitators get them to talk about themselves — their problems, their fears, what they want out of life, what's standing in their way. It's a gut-wrenching experience and you can believe me when I say there are a lot of tears.

        “The outdoor portion builds on that by forcing them to trust each other with their well-being.

        “The goal is to penetrate their shells and teach what we call our four cornerstones — respect, commitment, support and possibility. To that, we add a fifth, and that's joy.”

        The other problem YOU faces right now is a lack of volunteers. Each intensive course is 50 kids and ideally 200 volunteers willing to go through training and then give up a week to live in the woods.

        It's that “village” thing again.

        The committed partner issue is also critical. Those are the ones who hook up with a grad of the intensive course and spend a year as a sort of super-mentor. They meet with their kid once a week, talk on the phone two or three times, go to monthly mentoring meetings. They are trained, retrained and then trained some more.

        They also help their charge handle anything that comes up — school problems, arrests, family problems, peer pressure, job-hunting — while working on two year-long projects, one personal to the youth and one a community service project.

        More of that “village” thing.

        “We're looking for volunteers right now,” Mr. Mulhauser says. “They're hard to find and there's a burnout factor, but the rewards are just enormous. I'm finding volunteers frequently say they got more out of it than the kids.

        “Something else I'm finding out is a by-product of the course is that if done properly, you begin building a growing community of people who take responsibility for the welfare of youth in general.”

        Which is what makes the “village” grow.

        Youth Opportunities United welcomes new volunteers. Call 961-2000 for information or for an invitation to Swingin' "n' Cruisin' at Coney.

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