I’d also like to point out this article about the founder of the nonprofit Saving Our Kids. It’s a group that was started by Denise Ford, a Detroit florist who was disturbed at the number of flowers she had to prepare to decorate the caskets of kids killed by violence. “I kept thinking ‚Ķ it all hinged on the parents,” Ford said. “If parents spent more quality leisure time with their children, it would deter kids from getting into crime. I decided then it would be more important to get the message out than giving flowers out after they’re gone.”

The article says that the nonprofit is having a hard time maintaining funding and is now collecting donations through the United Way.

I’m a semi-retired CPA with some governmental background and some time to invest in a good cause. How do I plug in?

We will never have a truly vibrant community that taps the resources of all its people until we rescue the myriad of young people who simply drop out, are not educated to their potential, are under employed and turn to behaviors destructive to themselves and others.

This is particularly true today of young men. As a society, we have done a much better job with mentoring and energizing young women over the last 20 years. More young women than young men now enter college, graduate from college and enter fields that require educational preparation. The schols alont cannot remedy this situation.

I think we need to do two things:

First, we need an organization focused on young men that is similar to what the Michigan Women’s Foundation has done for young women. MWF has done a good job in fundraising for programs and creating groups called Young Women for Change. These groups of young women, which are now in several areas of the state, identify problems, ask for proposals for grants, make the grants and review and monitor the grantees. What an education they receive about problems young women face, and the potential for change. (The Ohio Bar Association sponsors a similar program for both young men and young women in Ohio. There, the students study and recommend solutions for issues students face every day in just getting safely to school, avoiding gangs, and avoiding drugs. The results have been astounding.)

Second, we also need to energize every man to mentor young men in the same way that women have been mentoring young women and being role models for them for a long time. Twenty-five years ago we thought it was young women who needed this kind of attention in order to achieve equal access. Now it is clear that all young people need this kind of individual attention. This mentoring has to be done by people at every spectrum of active life, no matter how busy they are or how tired. The alternatives are too devastating to contemplate.

If someone will get back to me via my e-mail, I will forward a copy of a presentation that I did on these issues some months ago to an alumnae group. It references the resources and other raw material on which these comments are based.

I also think there are two people you might want to involve for tapping ideas and resources if you like these ideas. They are Barbara Hill, Exec. of Michigan Womens Foundation, and Lorraine Weber, Exec of Metropolitan Detroit Bar Association.

Kay Felt