Hope In the Wake of Columbine

From Qqqqqq on Wikipedia, Creative Commons

This is a story about Columbine High School. Unlike the thousands of stories that relive the horror of that day, this one is about a small group of ten troubled middle school students who transformed waves of despair into a tidal wave of hope.

In 1998 I received a grant from Youth Service America to form a mentoring program for troubled middle school students. I asked the Principal at John Dewey Middle School in Colorado to enroll his “ten worst students” into the Youth Investment Project. The students had common story arcs—parents in prison, bouts of homelessness, juvenile criminal records, low self-esteem, violent tendencies and chronic academic failure. By every objective standard, these program participants were the “worst”, the “least” and the “last."

The day after the shooting, we met at the Middle School to talk about what happened at Columbine. The students felt helpless, hopeless, despairing, and depressed. “What can we do?” “Is there anything we can do”? The world would have probably answered a resounding “no”. After all, these students could hardly show up at school on a regular basis. What could they possibly contribute? Yet, over the next days and weeks, we crafted a plan to seed service-learning and conflict resolution programs into 50 Denver/Littleton area schools. Something amazing began to happen. They, the violent, delinquent, impoverished, and self-admitted hopeless and helpless students, began to show up every day ready to work. They began to create volunteer programs and to speak at city hall meetings. They began to do the unthinkable---lead their peers and their community. On the one-year anniversary of the massacre, they woke early, arrived on-time, and fanned out offering a message of hope and healing. Partnered with nonprofit organizations and surviving Columbine students, our band of ten students inspired over 100 million people around the world through a Parade Magazine cover story, a front-page story in the Denver Post and extensive coverage on CNN.

Patrick Ireland, the “boy in the window”, stood side-by-side with the Youth Investment Project and delivered the message that everyone has a role to play in building a better world. Even the boy who was shot in the library and left for dead, even the ten kids who by all objective standards had nothing to contribute. It is they who led us on the anniversary. It is their example we should reflect on today.

Then, as today, I wondered….if this group of young people with no voice, no power, few skills, and a host of negative labels such as “failure, delinquent, and burden” could create such a tidal wave of hope, what more can we do? What differences can we make, those of us in positions of power and influence?

On the ten year anniversary of the Columbine massacre, let us pause to remember the events of April 20th. Let us prayfor the continued healing of the families and friends of those students. Let us look for ways to empower and inspire America’s young people who may feel helpless and hopeless, especially in light of our country’s current economic and social challenges. But let us also use the memory of the beautiful changes made by those “ten worst students” and those they inspired, to dig deep and reflect on what each of us can offer personally to ensure that our children are safe—that our nation is secure.

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Melissa Helmbrecht is Chair and CEO of SplashLife, Inc. a global membership network for millions of young people which provides connection, entertainment, economic and social benefits and a chance to make a change... for themselves and for the world. www.splashlife.com