Chad Roach: So if there's one question and problem that we've faced as an organization more than anything else, it's when a mom or a dad walks up and says, "Help, I've got a young person, I need to launch them into life. I've got a teenager, what do I do? How do I help... "
Daniel Craig: It's a boy!
Chad Roach: "How do I help this high schooler make to the next step? Is it college? Is it a job? Is it... What's next? And how in the world do I get this figured out? And how do I train them to be ready for that?" I think that's probably one of the biggest questions we've got, and that was really the question that drove the development of the Kick-start button.
Daniel Craig: 'Cause we've never had to face questions like that before ourselves. [chuckle]
Chad Roach: It was the question my mom and my dad asked when I turned 15, and it was like, "Oh, boy, he's 15, now what? He's 16, 17, 18, he's supposed to get somewhere. Now what?"
Kevin Swanson: You could throw him in a college and put $35,000 a year into it and then hope that after $100,000 of college debts they come out the other side with a job.
Chad Roach: Or a 50-50 chance at a job, as the case may be.
Kevin Swanson: Yeah. And that's the approach people take today. But you can't expect that as you once did.
Daniel Craig: No, you can't, because studies are showing that, first of all when it comes to the question of, "What am I supposed to do with my life?" Again, 80% of kids get through college and end up doing up something completely different than the area of their major after they've changed it two to four times on average. So a lot of people go into college thinking, "This is finally what's gonna answer the question of, 'What am I supposed to do with my life?'" But it doesn't. The other thing is studies from Rutgers University show that from the period of about 2008 to 2011, less than 50% of college graduates were even able to find a job. So the whole idea that just getting a college degree is actually gonna get you the job you're looking for, that's not panning out either.
Kevin Swanson: And the millennial generation isn't doing well. Front page of Atlantic Magazine or Newsweek or Time, they're reminding us that this generation is not prepared. They're the laziest generation, they're the least prepared generation, they're starting with the most debt of any previous generation and it just seems that we've got to do something different. We've got to provide a plan B, we've got to put some time and effort into the next generation and disciple them, and mentor them into what God wants them to do with their lives.
Daniel Craig: And a lot of it, it's the training mechanism that we've been using. For myself as a boy, I don't think that the traditional, "Get up and do your five hours of school every day" is necessarily the best thing for young people. I know there are some kids out there who are the model students and they always get As and they wake up every morning and say to their mom, "Here are my top three priorities for the day, rated in A, B, C, D." That wasn't me. And I think part of it was I needed that connection between education and real life. And that's what this really helps. This really helps bridge that gap between education and the rest of life.