Foundation leader seeking to help at-risk youth

“I have three boys and one girl, ages 18 to 22. The two oldest boys never really had any major problems. But the third one, he would always look for a challenge. If you’d say, ‘Don’t touch that stove, it’s hot,’ he was the type of kid who would have to go check for himself, just to see if it was true.

“He played sports while he was in school, but he never could finish anything he started. And during summers, I felt like trouble would always find him. That’s when I thought, OK, I need to come up with something for him to do. So I called around here looking for programs, but I didn’t really find anything to keep him occupied. I even took him to a behavior specialist. It was just hard to keep him productive. I was at my wit’s end. 

“Then one day when the police were patrolling the neighborhood, I stopped an officer and asked if he could help me. I told him the story about my son. And he was like, ‘I’m sorry to say that I don’t know of any programs here that can help him. Basically, your child will have to get in trouble before a judge would recommend placing him in a boot camp or other type of program.’ I told the officer, ‘I’m not waiting for that.’ I ended up sending him to a youth challenge program in Louisiana because I couldn’t find anything here. It’s sort of like a boot camp run by the Army. He went there for almost two years, and he excelled. I think it was the structure of getting up in the morning and running, and all of that kind of stuff.

“But I promised myself that once my last child graduated high school, I would do something for those in-between kids. It’s the child where you can see the path he’s heading down, and you’re trying to help him before he goes too far. So I started this foundation called the Why Wait Foundation. Our mission is to provide support and resources for prevention and early intervention programs and services for at-risk youth. I want to work with others in the community to make a difference in the lives of these young kids. I always tell people, it takes a village to raise our kids. It’s important that we work together if we want every child to succeed.”

— Tisha Manning