If a Hope Now youth can hold a job for 30 days or longer, we consider him a success. By this initial measure, over 80% of our trained youth are successful. Even if a young man loses his job after a month, he has learned something he probably never knew before: there is an alternative to the streets for earning money. He also has learned what it was that made him lose his job, such as missing days or being late. Hope Now youth miss too many days or are late too many times for a variety of reasons.

Many of our youth have criminal records that dog them. A record often starts with a GTA, grand theft auto. To our knowledge, only one had a record that included GTC, grand theft cow. Nith and his friends wanted to have a barbeque but had no meat, so one of his homies suggested, "Let's go shoot a cow." Nith told us he didn't want to do it, but he wasn't going to stand against the tide. After helping them bring it back, Nith butchered it and they all had a great time. The next day, they all were arrested. As we were about to place Nith in a permanent job, he told us there was a warrant out on him because he had failed to make a court appearance. Incidents like these helped us to focus first on clearing up a youth's bad past while still pointing him toward a good future...

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