Washington, D.C. – February 25, 2010 — The 5th Annual Challenge Champions Gala was held earlier this week and featured celebrities, politicians and military officials. But the real honorees were a pair of youths who, after dropping out of high school, are turning their lives around.
At the Tuesday night gala, Randy Babbitt, FAA administrator, presented Private and Instrument certificates to Clarence Wesley Jones and Ryan Armenta. Formerly high school dropouts and gang members, they completed their high school education and excelled at the character training and mentoring that was part of the Youth Challenge experience. The two were cadets in the On Wings of Eagles Foundation flight academy for disadvantaged youth, where they earned their ratings at TransPac Aviation Academy at Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix, Arizona, and are the first to earn their pilot certificates through the program.
Babbitt said airplanes treat every pilot the same. "The airplane does not care who you are or where you came from. I soloed at 16, got my pilot’s license at 17, and long, long before I became an airline pilot, or administrator, I spent a lot of hours pumping gas into a wing tank — someone else’s wing tank.
“The pilots in this room know that aviation doesn’t give bonus points for pedigree: it’s all about skill. It’s only about skill. The airplane expects you to be smart and prepared. It won’t ask if you’ve done your homework, but it will give instant feedback when you haven’t. The airplane expects you to be diligent and professional.
"We’re here tonight to honor two young men who’ve done the hard work and shown the dedication and have earned this achievement," Babbitt concluded. "An instrument rating is something to be proud of. These men have grown up and out of tough circumstances, and they’ve chosen a field where performance means everything. Gentlemen, when you look at your license, that’s my signature at the bottom, and I expect great things from you. So does the passenger. Congratulations."
About 1.3 million students drop out of high school each year, costing the nation more than $335 billion in lost wages, revenues and productivity over their lifetimes. High school dropouts are more likely to live in poverty, receive public assistance, go to prison, face health problems and get divorced.
But the mission of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is to intervene in and reclaim the lives of at-risk youth to produce program graduates with the values, skills, education and self-discipline necessary to succeed as adults. And it’s been working. The program has already helped nearly 100,000 young men and women. Eighty percent of graduates have earned their high school diploma or their GED, and more than 24 percent of graduates have gone on to attend college, while 18 percent have joined the military and 57 percent have entered the workforce in career-type jobs.
Upon completion of their commercial and flight instructor certificates, Jones and Armenta will become flight instructors for the next class of OWOEF cadets, set to arrive this summer. They each must work a 24-month internship as paid flight instructors before they can be hired with an airline or other flight operation.
NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., who attended the gala, said he sees the cadets as the true stars. “Their paths in life are inspirational to all of us. I don’t give them advice: I listen.”
Twenty-seven states and Puerto Rico currently have the program; another five states and the Virgin Islands have requested to add the program, which targets high school dropouts ages 16-18.
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Air Force Gen. Craig R. McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau, speaks with Indianapolis 500 champion Dan Wheldon and NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt Jr. at the fifth annual Youth ChalleNGe Champions Gala in Washington, D.C. The February 23 gala honored advocates of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program, a 17-month voluntary intervention program that has graduated almost 100,000 former high dropouts since 1993. Photo credit: U.S. Army photo
by Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill
Training partners (a.k.a. “stick buddies”) Ryan Armenta and Wesley Jones. Photo credit: Summer 2009 Tail Wind, newsletter for the OWOEF
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