The Truman Charities Podcast
Join Jamie Truman on a transformative journey as she connects to individuals making a difference in their communities. From New York Times bestselling authors to compassionate doctors and visionary farmers, our podcast unveils untold narratives shaping our communities. Whether it's a doctor revolutionizing healthcare or a farmer transforming food systems, our guests are trailblazers, influencers, and innovators driving positive change.
Truman Charities, a charitable organization with a mission, donates $250 toward their causes for every powerful story shared on the podcast.
The Truman Charities Podcast
What Impact Does A Safe Home Have On A Child's Education? | Boys Hope Girls Hope Baltimore Executive Director Arlene Hackbarth Ep. 132
Structure, safety, and support – these are key factors in shaping a child’s future. But how can we help promising students living in Baltimore's most disadvantaged, low-income neighborhoods overcome the obstacles standing in their way? In this episode, host Jamie Truman welcomes Arlene Hackbarth to share how Boys Hope Girls Hope Baltimore is transforming lives through stability, education and long-term mentorship.
She highlights the challenges these students face, how their holistic approach nurtures potential, and the lasting impact of their Residential and After School Academy programs. Hear inspiring success stories and learn how you can help bring hope and life-changing opportunities to more children!
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Welcome to the Truman Charities podcast. I am Jamie Truman, your host. There are so many academically motivated young girls and boys in Baltimore, but many face the challenges of living in low-income neighborhoods. Their parents, like all parents, are so supportive and dream of a better future for their children, but circumstances often make this difficult. This is where Boys Hope, girls Hope steps in. They provide a safe and nurturing home for these driven young men and women, guiding them to become well-educated and career-ready adults. If you're a fan of the show Extreme Makeover, which I used to love watching, you may have seen them featured on that, because Extreme Makeover actually helped them create their girls' home.
Speaker 1:Today, I had the privilege of speaking with Executive Director Arlene Hackworth about how they create an environment that fosters success. We discussed some of their alumni and stories of becoming doctors. Lawyers are truly amazing. Arlene also shared how we can all support their mission to help even more young men and women in Baltimore. But before we continue, please take a moment to rate and review our podcast. It is simple just scroll down, hit five stars and leave a short review. So please just pause this podcast very quickly, or pause this episode very quickly, and go ahead and rate and review this podcast. Your reviews make a real difference in introducing our podcast to new listeners. As a volunteer-based organization, we truly appreciate your support. So thanks for listening and let's learn more about Boys Hope, girls Hope. All right, hi, arlene, how are you doing? I'm so glad that you were able to come on and talk with us today.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Jamie. I really appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 1:Good, I'm really excited to get into Boys Hope Girls, hope Baltimore your organization. But first I want to learn a little bit about you. Can you tell us, like a little bit about your background and why you're so passionate towards this organization?
Speaker 2:I am a licensed professional counselor and I have spent my entire career in the nonprofit sector. I spent 25 years at Catholic Charities working with their family and children's division. I spent five years working with homeless veterans, and so my whole passion has been helping people. And I came to Boys Hope Girls Hope five years ago and I was just so enthralled with the mission, the long-term commitment that we have to our scholars, the uplifting way that we work with them and watching somebody, a young person, grow from age 10 all the way through college and seeing them going on for careers. I was just blown away by how this organization just maintains relationships with the scholars long-term and I just thought that's the way to do it. It's not just helping them one hurdle at a time, it's helping them through all their hurdles of their careers.
Speaker 1:That sounds amazing and I want to know a little bit more. Go into detail a little bit about how are you helping these boys and girls in Baltimore.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we work with academically motivated young people that are in need and help them to become career ready. These are kids that come from low income, disadvantaged neighborhoods, who have parents who are really, really supportive of them and want better things for their child. And these are kids who really want to learn that they really see themselves as dreaming about a future and wanting something better for themselves. But their circumstances are working against them. So they're in neighborhoods where they have to walk to school, going through drug dealers and seeing needles on the streets, and they have to be worried about violence happening right in their streets. And you have parents who are working so hard and in jobs so that maybe they're out to work when their child comes home from school, so they're not there to help them with their homework or to make sure they're having good dinners. They're not getting socialization. Parents are locking them in their homes sometimes because they don't want them going outside. When they're not getting socialization, parents are locking them in their homes sometimes because they don't want them going outside when they're not around. I mean, it's just not safe. So what we provide? We have two homes in Baltimore that are both in a safe neighborhood and we have eight boys and eight girls in each home and they come and live with us. It's a voluntary program. The parents are on board, we partner with them, they live with us. We get them into really good schools. As you know, a lot of the Baltimore City schools are failing Our kids. They're just not learning. So they come to us, we get them in really top rated private public schools and we make sure they get to school. We make sure that they have their uniforms ready, we make sure that they have good meals, we make sure they do their homework and we work with them to become scholars and to see education as a positive thing. We say it's really something when the kids come home from school and they want to show us that they got an A on their paper or they got a certificate for doing well, and just see their eyes light up when they're seeing themselves achieving. So we have high expectations for them, and not only the educational piece but the social development, because obviously they're living with other kids so they're learning conflict resolution, they're learning how to be friends, they're working with adults, they're learning how to build relationships with people. And then we also teach them to give back and we're very community minded. So we always help them to have purpose and to learn about gratitude. So our kids do community service up to 100 hours or more a year. So they work at places like Our Daily Bread, which is a big food kitchen downtown where they help with the homeless. We've had them work at Fresh Fruit Farms, which is a nonprofit that grows food and distributes it to nonprofits. So we have them go and help and do things like that so we really instill in them a sense of community and purpose.
Speaker 2:So once they get through high school, we help them get into college and they can pick the college they want. We might have some suggestions, but you know it's their life and we help them If they have a dream, if they have a place they want their life and we help them if they have a dream, if they have a place they want to go, we work with them to help them get into the college and our scholars right now we have seven collegians in places like University of Maryland, university of Southern California, loyola University, salisbury State University, washington College, so they're all over we support them through college both financially and emotionally. We check in with them regularly to make sure they're doing okay and then after they get out of college, we help them if they need it to get jobs, and a lot of times they don't need it because these kids have learned how to again advocate for themselves and how to go out there. But some of our alumni have gone on to things like JP Morgan working there. And we have someone working at the New York Times in their book editing section.
Speaker 2:And this May we celebrated Dr Dwayne Thomas, who received his medical degree from Howard University and he's doing his residency with the US Navy. So what we see? We've known him since he was 10, and he's been with the program now over 20 years. He's been connected with us and just to see that growth and the beauty of it is just so heartwarming and we know we're giving them the tools that they need to be successful. So it's a wonderful program and I always say it's the best kept secret in Baltimore because it's not widely known.
Speaker 2:We kind of work under the radar. We're just referral based. Our schools that we work with refer children to us. We have parents who hear about it from other parents and give us a call and we vet every child that comes in to make sure for the most part, jamie, that they're motivated. You can look and say, oh well, maybe they don't have to have a certain grade, but do they really want to concentrate on school? Do they really want to have a future? If they want it, we're going to help them to get it.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about what is the average age of a girl or boy that comes into your organization and what is that vetting process like?
Speaker 2:Okay. So when they come, when we get a referral and usually it's from guidance counselors, school principals, parents, neighbors who hear that their children are next to a neighbor has their child in the program we do a thorough vetting process. All of our scholars have to economically be either at or below the poverty level, so that's one of the criteria. We do home visits, we talk with the parents. We want to make sure that the parents are on board, that they are willing to partner with us. It's a big decision for them, obviously to have their child come and live with us a number of weeks so they can test it out. Do they like it, Do they want to be here? And if they're motivated and the child wants to come and the parent wants them to come and they show academic promise. So they have to have the desire of wanting to learn and if they have that and they're willing to go by our rules, which we are very structured with them, Tell me a little bit about what those rules are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of the kids we have them write a recommitment paper about why they want to come back year after year to make sure they're motivated. And one of the girls wrote well, I don't like how they don't let me be on my cell phone all the time, but I think in the end that's good for me.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it really is. I just interviewed the founder of ScreenStrong and she has about 1,000 reasons why that's a good idea.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and so you know, some of our scholars have cell phones but we really restrict the use. I mean, they can't have it in their rooms at night, they can't have it after school until their homework's done. So and they learn to do chores. So they have to be part of the family, which includes, you know, helping to clean up after dinner and making sure that the living room's swept up, and they have to get care of their own laundry and we obviously those facilities in the home so that they can take care of that. So they have structure, bedtime, certain wake-up time, so just even that is new for some of our scholars and they have to learn to keep their rooms clean, little things like that. But I think that they really thrive under that. They really appreciate having that structure and learning those skills, because that's what they are.
Speaker 2:And then what we found is that there's so many kids that wanted our program, jamie, that we started last year an academy Right, an after-school academy, because we thought that there might be scholars that don't need to live in our program but could use our program for after-school, for academics, for socialization. So we just opened up this after-school program and said let's see what the response is Okay. So in a year that's grown to eight new scholars in addition to our 16, to eight new scholars in addition to our 16. They have to come two days a week after school to do their homework and to catch up, and they also get to do fun things. We go to the YMCA, we go on field trips. They get to do the fun stuff. What we're finding is that they have to come two out of the three days. Most of them are coming all three days. They love the program so much they feel safe there. It's held in the girls' house. If you look up Extreme Makeover in 2010,. They built our home Really. Well, you're with that. Yes, move that bus.
Speaker 1:Yes, I do Really.
Speaker 2:So in 2010, they did build the girls' house for us, so it is huge and massive and beautiful. A little impractical for only eight scholars, so that's why we decided we could expand that and we could easily fit up to 16 more kids in the downstairs area for an academy after school, so with still plenty of room. So that's been a real new success for us and it helps us to reach more scholars in the area.
Speaker 1:Wow. And so who's staying in the home, in the girls' and the boys' house?
Speaker 2:So we have youth specialists that are hired, that live there and they have their own suite that they have so that when they're off duty they have privacy, you know. So they're there overnight. So we do have 24-7 counselors there just to make sure that the kids are safe, and every other weekend they go home so that they can maintain their connection with their family. And then the weekends that they're with us, we do that community service or we do field trips, or we just do movie nights or normal things you do when you're at home. So they get both.
Speaker 1:That's perfect. I was going to ask you how often they go back to see their parents and, honestly, what has been the feedback from the parents? I know it must be difficult, you know, as a parent myself, at first having your child, you know, move from your house. But what has been the feedback from parents?
Speaker 2:Well to be honest, for most of the parents it's a relief, right, because they're at work now and they don't have to worry. They're not worried about what's happening to their child when they're not home. They're feeling better about having their child someplace safe and the parents are welcome to come at any time. We have parents that come and cook for us and they come to dinner and they can share time with their child. If they want to pick them up and take them somewhere, or shopping or hang out with them, they're more than welcome to do that because, again, we're partnering with them.
Speaker 2:We're not taking their role and the parents are informed of everything that's going on with their child and, if they're able to, we pick them up to take them to the parent-teacher conferences. We make sure that they're involved in their child's life and if we have to make some decision that's big about their child whether it's, you know, something about getting them extra help or making sure they get in counseling the parents are always a part of that process and they're allowed to be kids. You know, they can play basketball in the backyard. They can play games with each other. They can, you know, pop popcorn and watch a movie with a blanket. As a family unit, that we kind of nurture that environment, that it's very warm and welcoming for them.
Speaker 1:Now do you see a lot of the children. What are their relationships like when they kind of graduate from the home? Do you see that they stay together like it's a close-knit type of family, those kids?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the friendships that they make when they're there they always call themselves brothers and sisters that they do stay in touch with each other and it's very heartwarming to see. So if I needed to get in touch with one of the alumni, I could just call another one and say do you have someone's number and they're like right away, so yeah, they do keep in touch with each other and have a really nice relationship.
Speaker 1:You know you have a great part on your website where you go through some of the alumni. Can you just tell us maybe one of a story or two about one of the girls or boys that have been through your organization that it's really had a positive impact on them?
Speaker 2:There are so many, jamie, I'm trying to think. I just talked about Dwayne, who graduated and in fact just referred one of his family members to our program. So we see that that he has such a positive experience that he's himself is being a referral base for us. So we have two young ladies right now who are in PhD programs. One is at Johns Hopkins University getting her degree in, and I have to I always laugh.
Speaker 1:I can't even pronounce what that is it's like biomedical engineering, we're not smart enough to even say what she's getting her degree in. I'm not.
Speaker 2:I'm not To be honest and the other ones at the University of Pennsylvania getting her PhD in a similar type of field. So we have these kids and Serena, who is at the University of Southern California. I mean, this is a child who was smart. She went through Bryn Mawr. You know that. She got a full ride from them and that's what we have. We see that we got a lot of support from the high schools in the area and the middle schools, because they know our program and they know, if a scholar is in our program, that we're going to be on top of their schooling and we're going to partner with them. If there's a deficit, if there's something going on, we're going to catch it early so that we can correct it. So we had Amina, who is at Temple University. She was National Honor Society. We have someone at McDonough. He was president of his class at St Ignatius. We have an alumni who is going to speak at our fundraiser next week and he is actually the sports writer for CBS Sports and Soccer.
Speaker 2:Wow, these are all very impressive yeah you know, and that's what's really nice we have Mark Franklin, who was the chief photographer for Playbill Magazine in New York, who's now a photographer for MSNBC for Playbill Magazine in New York, who's now a photographer for MSNBC. Every year when we have a fundraiser, if we call him, he'll send us one of his original pieces of photography that we can use in an auction. So again, you know, there's so many stories like that where you see these kids who came from really disadvantaged circumstances where they just needed some help. You know, we gave the hope they had it, we ignited it. We had them, gave them the support that they needed and they took off with it. They took advantage of it and it's just been incredible to see the numbers of alumni who again stay in touch. If I called one of the alumni and said I need you to give a speech at a fundraiser or would you do a video for me, they're on it. They want to help, they want to support. So it's really heartwarming to see that their experience is positive.
Speaker 2:One of our young men three of his siblings are now on our program. Wow, and he's on them. It's like you know, you better do. Well, you have this opportunity and it's very cute to see. So again, this long-term commitment that this program has and again, I've been very blessed to be in many nonprofits in my career. But they're short-term, right. So we help them for a couple years or a year or six months, and then we help them get on their feet and then they go off and we don't really know what the next step in their journey ends up being. And here at Boys Hope, girls Hope, we're with them the whole time. They can come and live with us as young as age 10. And they can come in the academy as early as age 8. So you know we're talking 12, 14-year commitment that we're going to be with them.
Speaker 1:Wow, since you do have such a long commitment with these children, you only have eight per house. Do you have a long wait list, or how often do you have an opening for children?
Speaker 2:Well, it depends on how the cycle goes. For instance, we had three graduates this year from high school, so we have three openings and usually we have a wait list that we can just fill that with, you know, the next ones in line. And then this year, for instance, we don't have any seniors, right? So we wouldn't have any openings this year because we don't have any movement.
Speaker 2:So you know, depending on, what year it is where the turnover is and we're looking actually to see. You know, where can we help more kids and which is why we have the academy, because it ends up being kind of a wait list for some of our kids who can't get into the residential piece.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's perfect. So it kind of flows into the academy. I was just going to ask you, how do you see Boys Hope, Girls Hope in the future?
Speaker 2:Well, I see the academy as growing. I think that that is the way to go in order to be able to serve more scholars. So, again, we are donor-based, Jamie. So I mean, it's a matter of you know, can we find the funds and the resources to be able to grow? Because again, we're getting requests, Schools are asking us to look at kids, to bring them into the program, and we hate to turn anybody down just because you know that's not. Our mission is to help, Right, and we don't want to say no, there's no opportunity. Our mission is to help and we don't want to say no, there's no opportunity. And again we've taken children who you might say, oh, their grades aren't that great, you know, is this a scholar? And we always say, well, we don't know yet, but we think we're going to give that child a chance and I would say about 95% of the time, just giving them the tools is working for them.
Speaker 1:Give the opportunity for them to succeed. It's amazing to watch. Now, how can people that are listening, how can we help you?
Speaker 2:Well, as I mentioned before, we're definitely donor-based, so I mean any donations to our program. We're so grateful for that. So we're always looking to see if people could support us financially so that we can continue on our mission. If that's not something people are comfortable with, we take donations of food, for instance, and paper goods you can imagine the things that teenagers go through so anything that can help us run a household laundry detergent. We would take gifts of those type of nature too, because that's really helpful in cutting down our costs. We do have people volunteering to come and tutor and do one-on-ones or to come and teach arts and crafts. If you have businesses that are listening people who run a business. Our scholars love to learn about career opportunities, so if they say they could come to our place and learn about our business, we'll do a field trip and take them there. So because it opens their world.
Speaker 1:Right, that's a fantastic idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just you know, because you know. You ask them what they want to do in the future and a lot of them don't even know what's available. So one of our jobs is to expand their world in that way, to make sure that they can open their eyes to new, different opportunities that they might not even have thought of, different opportunities that they might not even have thought of. So we had, you know, somebody in the medical field come and we took them to a hospital and taught them not only about being a doctor or a nurse, but different types of jobs within a hospital system, so that they can be involved.
Speaker 2:You know one of our young ladies who's in University of Maryland. She really wanted to work with animals when she went in, when she wanted to be a vet. Well, she got some internships that we helped her to get and now she said you know what I want to do? The policy work behind these programs. So she changed gears a little because we got her an internship with I believe it was the ASPCA, and she really thought I could do more good this way. So expanding their world in that way and helping them to see other opportunities is really big. So if you have listeners again who have different types of careers, where we could take kids and teach them what they are. We would love to have that opportunity, I love that, Arlene.
Speaker 1:is there anything that we haven't covered that you think someone should know?
Speaker 2:I think just to realize that we are not just academic I think I hit on it a little bit during our talk but just to understand, jamie, that we know that it's not just the education piece that you get in school, that part of their education is learning about life.
Speaker 2:So when I talked about experiences in terms of work, we also try to give them life experiences outside, taking them to museums, taking them some of our kids have never been to the ocean, so just taking them to Ocean City.
Speaker 2:We took our scholars to the aquarium this summer and one of our new girls, a young girl, she's age 10, going to the aquarium and we're going to see sharks and she honestly looked at me and said are sharks real? Because she had never seen one. So it made us realize that for a lot of our scholars, they just need to experience life and the things that we take for granted because we go to these places. And that's another thing people could do, because tickets to baseball games and football games and our scholars were honored by the Baltimore Ravens for their community service work, so that was a real treat and they got to go on the field and they got to go to a football game again. They live in Baltimore and some of them have never even been to the stadium, and just being able to open their eyes to new opportunities and to see the world in a different way is just one of the things that we strive to do, wow.
Speaker 1:Arlene, how can people follow you guys?
Speaker 2:So we have obviously Boys Hope, Girls Hope of Baltimore. We have a Facebook page, we are on LinkedIn, I believe we're on Twitter.
Speaker 1:I have to be honest, I'm not on Twitter. Or is it X now? Don't worry, look on the show notes. I will have all of the ways that you can get in touch with Boys Hope, girls Hope, and follow them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So again, let us know we could put you. We have contact lists for people who want to get periodic updates through emails. They're welcome to join our family that way. Again, so many ways people can get involved because we see the community as our family. So you know, come join our family in some way. Share your talents. We have people who have you know knowledge about how to do certain arts and crafts or how to play a sport and for them to come and teach our scholars that these kids love to learn. I'm so impressed all the time their attentiveness to people coming in and teaching them things they just want to learn. So anybody wants to come and teach them new skills, they're more than welcome to be part of our family.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, arlene, this has been so eye-opening. I can't believe all the amazing work that you're doing for so many boys and girls in Baltimore, so I wanna thank you so much for coming on. Wow, wasn't that an incredible podcast with Arlene, about Boys Hope and Girls Hope. I loved hearing about the alumni and also just how they've become family with these kids and these kids stay deeply connected with each other, like all through their upbringing and then into adulthood as well. So if you liked this podcast, please again rate and review. It Really does mean so much to us.
Speaker 1:And, while you're at it, hit the subscribe button so you don't miss any future episodes. If you would like to follow us, you can follow Truman Charities on Facebook. At Truman Charities Instagram, jamie underscore Truman Charities. You can follow me, jamie Truman, on LinkedIn. And then, so you don't miss any of our upcoming events or Bethesda's best happy hours, go on determinedcharitiescom and make sure to sign up for our newsletter. And if you don't know by now, I wrote a book Vanishing Fathers the Ripple Effect on Tomorrow's Generation. 100% of the proceeds of that book go directly to charity, and these are charities that are helping at-risk youths. So far, since this March debut, we have raised a little over $80,000. So make sure to grab a copy of that book. You can pick it up on Amazon, barnes, noble's, online really any online bookstore. So thanks again for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities Podcast. Until next time.
