• Director's Message • Staff Bios • CES Facts • Media			Director's Message I joined CES as a youth volunteer in 1981 and still love working here. Here is why. In CES I found people who wanted to help others as well as make a lasting impact on the community. I saw young people not only receiving help, but also being encouraged to lead and contribute. And I found people dedicated to a quest equally of the heart and mind, willing to ask tough questions and take risks to make change. As a result, each CES program is itself a grand risk to produce both individual improvement and broad systemic change. In ACT, youth develop their own interpersonal and academic skills even as they produce a radio show aimed at influencing the community's traditions around parent/child communication. ALL helps high school juniors prepare for college as they mentor freshmen at-risk of dropping out and advise a school-wide change process. And in REAL, students learn to respect each other and take increased responsibility for their education even as the program attempts to integrate youth development principles into teacher training programs in Bay Area universities. It is all very rewarding, and very difficult. The ideas, and the people skilled enough to implement them, do not grow on trees. Funding is not easy to come by, as potential granters do not easily believe that a relatively small community agency has the wherewithal to take on an issue large as school reform. Within the agency, we often disagree and things sometimes don't go as planned. Yet, because of CES, lives are transformed. A shy teenager learns to be a group leader, a potential drop-out shoots for straight-A's, a "hard case" opens up and becomes a prime motivator for the team, and a group of friends is created that will last a lifetime. Parents learn to understand their kids better, and classrooms transform into places where students feel like they are learning among family. Perhaps the greatest compliment CES received was when a colleague from another youth agency said, "…most agencies invest in building programs. What I like about CES is that you invest in people." So that is why I love being part of CES. I feel extremely fortunate to work with people, students, staff, Board members, school teachers & administrators, and parents who are willing to act on their highest visions and to persevere to bring those visions into reality in the here and now. Thank you for your interest in CES. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me at darin@cessf.org.   Darin Ow-wing, CES Executive Director
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