I have shown for 25 years how you take a person who has only been trained to hold their hand out and teach them… empower them.. show them that they have that energy and ability to take care of themselves. There is no one out there who can’t go to work.

Taking young men and women, that have never been shown how to make a legal living and raising them… by the time they are 20 or 30 years old, do you really think they’re ever going to get it? No… they’re going, for the rest of their life’s, to be holding their hand out… we’re creating a giant problem.

We need to empower, instead of beat down and punish… educate and train instead of  belittle and degrade. Create a system that doesn’t class people as expendable. Right now, we do deem the bottom 20% of our society as expendable… it’s always been that way… it’s disgusting… those are the ones who need us the most… they are the ones that cost us the most money by having to provide for them when they don’t work… they’re the ones that could help us most… they are an underutilized resource.

We’ve ran 19 young people through our empower and re-entry program… every one of them was on the path to become career criminals, that would have cost us $40,000 to $50,000 a year in a small community, $70,000 to $80,000 a year in a larger community to lock them up… and all that gets us is the ability to spend that or more next year.

Rupert’s Kids spends $5,000 to $10,000 per person, empowering and teaching that person to take care of themselves and save our communities $30,000 to $70,000 a year, and fill that person with self-worth and work-ethics that help keep them from committing further crimes.