A Year of
EMPOWERMENT
Boys Hope Girls Hope
Annual Report, 2012
Introduction—A Year of
Empowerment
As much as Boys Hope Girls Hope would like to take credit for the amazing accomplishments of our
scholars and alumni, we can’t.
We don’t create these young people who leave our program and go on to dizzying heights of
accomplishment. We don’t give them the talents that they use to achieve their dreams. And we don’t
give them the drive that propels them out of their old lives into new ones.
What we do is empower them.
The second word in our four-word tagline is “empower.” That word isn’t there just because it sounds
good. It’s there for a reason. It’s difficult to think of a word that better describes what we do, or better
encapsulates our mission and programming.
The scholars whom we serve come to us from situations over which they have no control. They face
obstacles placed in their path by circumstances not of their making. And to a child, those obstacles may
seem insurmountable. They threaten to trap children of disadvantage in lives in which they have no
real choices.
What Boys Hope Girls Hope does is to restore the dimension of choice to their lives. We give them
opportunities that their old lives did not provide them. We help them first identify, and then channel,
their inherent abilities and characteristics. And we provide the circumstances that allow those inborn
qualities to thrive. We teach them that they do not have to remain at the mercy of their destiny—that
they can take an active role in controlling that destiny.
In short, we empower them.
That’s why we’ve chosen “A Year of Empowerment” as the theme of this Annual Report. In this
publication, we highlight some former scholars who have been empowered by being part of Boys Hope
Girls Hope, and who best exemplify the miraculous change that can be wrought in a life when a young
person is given the chance to let his or her innate abilities, not the circumstances of their young lives,
determine their fate. We hope you enjoy these profiles in empowerment, and we thank you for the role
that you, our supporters, have played in empowering these remarkable young people.
From the President
and CEO
Dear friends and supporters of Boys Hope Girls Hope,
2012 was a banner year for us in many ways.
As the dark skies of economic recession lifted, we emerged stronger, bigger, and better than
ever. We didn’t just survive the recession—we used it as a chance to improve. We saw growth
instead of cutbacks; expansion instead of contraction; and improvement instead of
maintaining the status quo, thanks to the commitment to the mission of our supporters,
volunteers, staff, and scholars.
We could use this Annual Report as a chance to trumpet our triumphs—but we choose,
instead, to keep the focus squarely where it always has been: on the scholars whom we serve.
We profile, in this year’s Annual Report, a selection of our recent alumni: outstanding and extraordinary young people
who embody the concept of Empowerment. This concept is key to what Boys Hope Girls Hope is all about.
The children whom we serve, who live in our homes, who attend our after-school programming, whom we support
through college, come to us from circumstances beyond their control. The traumas their families and communities have
suffered are not of their making; the hardships they have endured are not their fault. All too often, young people from
such backgrounds become victims of circumstance. They become prey to poverty, violence, and countless other perils that
beset children of disadvantage.
But the lives of the alumni profiled here are testimony to the power of education, round-the-clock care and support, and
belief in their innate abilities to control their own destinies and overcome their circumstances.
These young people are no longer at the mercy of their situations. They are equipped, intellectually, physically, and
spiritually, to meet and overcome the challenges of life instead of succumbing to them. And perhaps most importantly,
they know this.
Education is a crucial part of our mission—we exist to impart knowledge to our scholars. But it isn’t only the knowledge
that comes from books and experience: it is the knowledge that they can control their lives. The knowledge that they can
use their talents and their abilities for the benefit of others. The knowledge that they have been empowered.
This knowledge, as much as anything else, is your gift to them. I invite you to see the results of your support of Boys Hope
Girls Hope writ large in the lives of the young people who, thanks to you, have been empowered to rise above the
circumstances that brought them to us.
Sincerely,
Paul A. Minorini
President and CEO
Boys Hope Girls Hope
Board of
Directors 2012
Chair
Mike de Graffenried, Retired,
Jack Malloy, President, Arrow Box
Citigroup
Mark Mantovani, President and
Vice Chair
Patrick Sly, Executive Vice
CEO, Ansira Engagement
Marketing
Suzanne Mondello, Business
Consultant
Patrick J. Moore, President &
CEO, PJM Advisors, LLC.
Jeanne C. Olivier, Partner,
Shearman & Sterling
Thomas W. Santel, Former
President & CEO, AnheuserBusch International, Inc.
Dave Schmitt, Chief Executive
Officer, The Armor Group, Inc.
Paul G. Sheridan, S.J., Founder,
Boys Hope Girls Hope
President, Emerson
Treasurer
John Wunderlich, Business
Consultant
Secretary
David O. Danis, Retired, The David
Danis Law Firm, P.C.
Paul A. Minorini, President & CEO,
Boys Hope Girls Hope
National Board Members
Jorge Arce, Managing Director,
Deutsche Bank
Richard Axilrod, Managing
Director, Moore Capital Management
LP
Maureen Brown, Community
Volunteer
Louis Carr, President, Broadcast
Media Sales, BET Holding, Inc.
John W. Creamer, Retired Partner,
Ernst & Young
Moir Donelson, President, Devro, Inc.
Peter J. Gabbe, COO/CFO, Jump
Apparel
Jerry M. Hunter, Partner, Bryan Cave
Gregg Kirchhoefer, Partner,
Kirkland & Ellis
Mark L. Lombardi, Ph.D.,
President, Maryville University
Co.
Rev. Walter T. Sidney, S.J.,
President, DeSmet Jesuit High
School
Gayle Stratmann
Retired VP/General Counsel,
Energizer Holdings
Michele Thornton, VP, TV Ad
Sales, CentricTV
John C. Vatterott, Founder &
Former President, Vatterott
Educational Centers
Robert F. Weiss, S.J., Delegate for
Higher Education, Jesuits of the
Missouri Province
Gerald L. Wolken, Managing
Partner, MLE Enterprises, Inc.
Profiles in Empowerment:
YESENIA DERAS
A few minutes of conversation with Yesenia Deras will cure anyone’s blues.
Yesenia, an alumna of our Southern California Affiliate, is relentlessly
optimistic, and contagiously upbeat. She’s a young woman who looks
confidently to her future and is excited about it.
But this wasn’t always the case.
The child of immigrants from El Salvador, she spent her early years in
downtown Los Angeles. “It wasn’t always the most supportive environment,”
she says, and family tensions exacerbated the situation. By the time she was
fourteen, she says, she was seriously considering running away from home.
“I just wanted to get out of my house,” she says. “But that would have
been the worst thing for me. I wouldn’t have gone to college... I wouldn’t
have graduated. I wouldn’t have learned to take care of myself.”
Luckily, she had an acquaintance already in the program, who
recommended it to her, and in 2001, she became a part of the Boys Hope
Girls Hope family. Her life took an abrupt turn for the better. She enrolled at
Rosary High School, where she discovered she had a gift for mathematics,
and her grades shot up: from B’s and C’s, she began making all A’s, an
academic achievement she maintained throughout high school—and she
discovered a taste for volunteering and community service.
But there was a more profound change taking place.
“Being in Boys Hope Girls Hope gave me confidence,” she said. “The
program gave me the ability to believe in myself, and to trust my own
wisdom. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who
encouraged me instead of discouraging me. The people I lived with—the staff
and the other scholars—were always there for me, and they were always
positive. It gave me confidence.”
More than confidence, the program gave her something even more
Southern California alum YESENIA DERAS, graduating
from college—a dream achieved by unlocking the
precious.
confidence and the potential she always had within
“I felt like I was able to be myself, for the first time,” she says. “I’m
herself.
naturally peppy. I’ve always been positive, but that wasn’t something I was
allowed to be at home. At Boys Hope Girls Hope, all that positivity brought out what was already inside me.”
Her newfound confidence, as well as embracing her natural optimism, not only helped get her through college, but
through a potentially deadly health hazard that required several surgeries to correct. She emerged unscathed, and with an
enhanced sense of independence.
Her academic performance earned her scholarships to Chapman University, where she put her mathematical
abilities to use by majoring in accounting. Today, she works as an accountant, and is preparing to become a CPA—and she
retains her passion for community service.
“After I become a CPA,” she says, “I want to volunteer my time and my abilities to nonprofits to help them with
their bookkeeping and help them get their accounts in order. Anything I can do to help and to give back.”
Profiles in Empowerment:
GREG SCRUGGS
Within minutes of meeting Greg Scruggs, you can tell there’s something remarkable about him. He radiates a quiet
confidence and speaks enthusiastically and knowledgeably about a wide variety of topics. If you didn’t ask him, you might
never know that he’s one of the NFL’s rising stars—Number 98 on the Seattle Seahawks’ defensive line.
Greg was the second of four sons in a close-knit family whose deep faith (his great grandfather was a Baptist pastor)
was the underpinning of their happiness. But when he was eight years old, Greg lost his father in a massive 25-car pileup.
“My dad was my biggest role model,” he says. “I think about him every day.” The family was devastated not only
personally but financially by the loss, and relocated to Winton Terrace, a public housing project in Cincinnati’s Winton
Hills neighborhood, an area marred by poverty and gang violence.
Fortunately, a friend of Greg’s mother had a child in Boys
Hope Girls Hope, and recommended the program for Greg as well.
“Being in Boys Hope Girls Hope gave me discipline, maturity,
and patience,” Greg says. “It teaches you to listen to other people and
to understand where they’re coming from. It taught me how to get
along with people, work with them, not against them, and learn from
them.”
Boys Hope Girls Hope also gave him the chance to study at St.
Xavier High School. “It changed my mentality,” he said. “Before St. X,
I only went to school because I had to. But once I was there, I wanted
to go to school. It gave me the kind of atmosphere of achievement I
needed. It was an atmosphere of achievement.”
Boys Hope Girls Hope Chief Academic Officer JULIE ALLEN, GREG SCRUGGS and
At St. Xavier, Greg’s natural talents found expression in a
Boys Hope Girls Hope President and CEO PAUL MINORINI
wide variety of ways—he played basketball and drums for the marching band. His athletic ability was also noticed by Steve Specht, the football coach.
“Coach Specht tried to get me to go out for football every year I was there,” Greg says. “Finally, my senior year, I
said, ‘Okay, Coach, I’ll do it.’ The only time I’d ever been on the football field before that was when I was playing drums in
the marching band.”
Greg went on to lead St. Xavier to the Ohio state championship, earning him full-ride scholarships from over 30
Division I schools. He chose the University of Louisville to stay close to his family. Even as a star athlete, Greg’s natural
drive kept him busy—he waited tables through school and graduated with a degree in sociology a semester early before he
was picked up by Seattle in the seventh round of the draft.
Greg remains close to Boys Hope Girls Hope, speaking to our scholars whenever he gets the chance and visiting
different Affiliates across the country.
“I’ve actually thought about coming back to Boys Hope as a residential counselor when I’m done playing football,”
he says seriously. “Being in the program broadened my horizons in ways I can’t even tell you about. One of the biggest
hurdles facing kids where I’m from—the kind of kid I was—is that they’re very narrow-minded. They just don’t know
what’s out there. I was like that—I never thought about college at all before I joined the program. It’s all about changing
circumstances, and showing kids that there’s a world out there bigger than the one they come from. They’ve got a very
narrow range of experience.
“Being in Boys Hope put me into contact with all kinds of different people, and taught me to think more broadly. I
never would have thought I’d be the kind of person who plays golf, or goes snowmobiling. Or listens to country music,
either,” he adds with a laugh. “But I do all of those things. I think that’s the biggest thing I could do for kids like I used to
be—broaden their horizons. Show them what’s out there.”
Empowerment:
Implementing The College Road in Latin America
Tools of
Nothing empowers a young person more than a college education. The access to new ideas, opportunities and
contacts, the sense of accomplishment and the confidence that comes as a result of having completed college are important
benefits of higher education.
For a child from a disadvantaged background, not only getting to college, but succeeding there, is a major
challenge. This is why Boys Hope Girls Hope created the College Road: a unique college preparatory curriculum that
prepares our scholars for all challenges of the college experience—academic, but also financial, social and psychological as
well. The College Road has proven to be uniquely successful, and was recognized in 2012 as one of the ten most effective
programs nationwide in moving children from poverty successfully through college. Click here to read the study.
In 2012, Boys Hope Girls Hope made the decision to take the College Road beyond our borders and put it to work
for the scholars of our Latin American programs as well. The Latin American College Road is now being piloted in
Guatemala. By 2014, the BHGH Latin American staff plan to have it operational in each of our four Latin American
Affiliates as well.
“The situation is different in Latin America,
and presents its own challenges,” says KRISTIN
OSTBY DE BARILLAS, BHGH Director of Latin
America. “Research shows that youth from poor
backgrounds rarely go to college in Latin America
and of those who do, the majority drop out. Children
from the demographics we serve often feel like fish
out of water in the college environment. They don’t
have their own cars and laptops. They feel
marginalized.”
Part of the difference between the college
experience in the United States and Latin America is
that collegians generally don’t go away for higher
education. They remain at home and study in
colleges and universities in their cities—a cultural
Technology is a crucial component of the College Road in Latin America. Here, VIVIAN
difference that puts children from the remote
MENDOZA uses PowerPoint to teach study skills to future Latin American collegians.
mountain villages and rural areas at a distinct
disadvantage.
“Some aspects of the US College Road—like preparation for dormitory life or SATs—don’t transition to Latin
America,” says Kristin. “But much of the program’s offerings—the academic and non-academic, social preparatory work—
does.”
In order to implement the College Road in Latin America and adapt it to that region’s unique culture, Boys Hope
Girls Hope and Esperanza Juvenil (Boys Hope Girls Hope Guatemala) recruited two educational professionals—Vivian
Mendoza and Yelyn Lopez—with years of experience and a personal perspective on the challenges faced by our scholars.
Vivian Mendoza holds a master’s in Educational Psychology from Spain and taught at and worked in top high
schools and universities in Guatemala before joining Boys Hope Girls Hope. Yelyn Lopez is a professional guidance
counselor who now works closely with the Esperanza Juvenil high school and college youth. Kristin calls them “the
dynamic duo.”
Implementing The College Road in Latin America-2
Our Latin American scholars leanrn to participate, express their own views, and, in the words
of our Director of Latin American Affairs, “become comfortable in their own skins” in a
classroom setting.
“One of the biggest hurdles for our kids is
psychological,” says Kristin. “A big part of our
college preparation is teaching them to feel
comfortable in their own skin and to be proud of
who they are and where they come from—letting
them know that they deserve a top education as
much as everyone else. Yelyn has years of
experience working with kids from the
marginalized sectors of Latin American society, and
kids from situations of extreme poverty—there are
no better people to help our students manage the
transitions in their lives.”
One aspect of the College Road that
translates easily from a U.S. to a Latin American
context is that of self-discovery: helping a young
person to identify his or her own skills and
interests, personality type, and other characteristics
that help the student to choose and succeed on a course of study.
“We’re trying to get them to think about questions like who am I, what am I good at, and how will I use what I’m
learning now,” says Kristin. “A big part of it is making them see where they fit in to the bigger picture, and giving them a
sense of purpose. We also impress upon them what a unique opportunity they’ve been given, how this is their chance to
break out of poverty, and to incorporate that idea into their daily life.”
The program brings in outside speakers who address educational issues for high school students, collegians and
staff. Every two weeks, Vivian and Yelyn hold a workshop for the students. “We’re developing a very strong online
component for the Latin American College
Road as well,” says Kristin. “This will not
only help our prospective collegians build
and maintain online portfolios as they do in
the States, but it will make our staff’s
expertise available across the region and
help build a stronger regional identity.”
Latin American collegians continue
to live at Boys Hope Girls Hope facilities as
they attend college. They also work parttime, which is the norm for college students
in Latin America. With their earnings, they
not only buy books and other needed
supplies, but many support younger
siblings or cousins so they too can attend
Continuing to live in Boys Hope Girls Hope homes as collegians gives young people added stability, the
opportunity to study together, and take advantage of help and support provided by staff.
school in their home communities.
Boys Hope Girls Hope
Global Reach 2012
In the UNITED STATES...
30 homes in 15 cities/metropolitan areas
250 in residential programs
263 in non-residential programs
150 collegians
12 graduate students
84% of our scholars
come from homes at or
below the poverty line.
675 young people being empowered across the
United States.
2012 Demographics
In LATIN AMERICA
11 homes in 4 countries
102 in residential programs
270 in non-residential programs
27 collegians
African American
Hispanic
Caucasian
Biracial
Asian/Pacific Islander
399 young people being empowered across Latin America.
Native American 1
Other
In 2012, Boys Hope Girls Hope empowered 1074 young people through
education, by providing safe and stable homes and environments, and teaching
them to put their skills, gifts, and advantages to work for others.
81,165
53,752
8,343,044
51,047
BOYS HOPE GIRLS HOPE FINANCIAL INFORMATION 2012
Statement of Activities
PUBLIC SUPPORT AND REVENUES
Contributions
Government grants
Support from local Affiliates
Investment return designated for
current operations
Other income
TOTAL SUPPORT/REVENUE
2012
2011
876,731
212,269
335,421
1,164,157
197,348
335,620
690,000
31,428
704,000
6,985
2,145,849
2,408,110
EXPENSES
Program Services
Supporting Activities
Management/general
Fundraising
Total Supporting Activities
2,298,412
2,412,107
440,627
73,468
514,095
366,946
54,170
421,116
TOTAL EXPENSES
2,812,507
2,833,223
(666,658)
(425,113)
(1,192,298)
(1,858,956)
15,482,570
13,623,614
2,217,068
1,791,955
13,690,615
15,482,570
Increase (decrease) in net assets
from operations
Investment returns (loss) greater than
amounts designated for current operations
Increase (decrease) in net assets
Net Assets—beginning of year
Net Assets—end of year