® WINTER 2017
Boys Town, Yesterday and Today From Humble Beginnings to a Leader in Child and Family Care
ecember 12, 1917, was a chilly day in Omaha, Nebraska. Passers-by hurried along the D downtown streets, their thoughts perhaps on Christmas, only two weeks away, and the preparations they still needed to make. Or, maybe they were wondering how the holidays would be different this year, with America now involved in the Great War being waged on the battlefields of Europe. In all the hustle and bustle, no one paid much attention to the tall, bespectacled priest who was shepherding several ragamuffin boys along the sidewalk. When the little group reached a somewhat run-down Victorian-style boardinghouse, the priest confidently strode to the front door, unlocked it and bade his young charges to enter. Once inside, he turned to the cluster of expectant faces and welcomed the boys Over a proud history spanning 100 years, Boys Town has provided life-changing love and care for America’s children! to their new home. There was no ribbon-cutting ceremony. Father Flanagan had borrowed $90 hard-pressed to provide enough food and No parade with marching bands. No from a businessman friend to rent the clothing for his boys. And as Christmas speech by the mayor. On that ordinary property. For at least a month, the boys approached, the prospects for a happy day, in that ordinary place, Father would have a roof over their heads. But holiday were bleak. By the morning of Flanagan’s Home for Boys (later to be there wasn’t much else. Between Christmas Eve, 25 boys were living in the known as Boys Town) opened its doors scarcities created by World War I and an house, and there was nothing to cook for and an extraordinary revolution began. overall lack of funding, the priest was Christmas dinner. Then, a Christmas miracle. As would be the case time and time again in those early days of the Home, someone ® The JOURNAL stepped forward to help just when Boys Town National Headquarters things seemed hopeless. This time, it 14100 Crawford Street was a kind Omaha merchant who Boys Town, NE 68010 delivered a barrel of sauerkraut on 800.217.3700 | [email protected] boystown.org © 2017, Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Home See “Humble Beginnings”: Page 7
Boys Town Celebrates 100 Years of Miracles, Healing Children in Body, Mind and Spirit
Dear Friend,
This Christmas season is an extra special one for all has developed the best care practices, grown in its of us at Boys Town. December 12, 2017, marks our national impact and continually evolved to effectively Centennial anniversary — 100 years of saving children meet the changing needs of America’s children. and healing families. We heal the “body” by making sure a child’s physical One hundred years is environment is safe, and that he or she is being a long time to be doing nurtured and loved, and disciplined in appropriate We bring compassion and anything. It’s especially ways. That means teaching takes the place of physical experience to the often- significant, to us and punishment and children live free of abuse and our dedicated neglect. It also means children receive quality medical supporters, when the care and begin leading a healthy lifestyle. We heal the difficult task of getting achievements of a “mind” by changing the way children think about their century of service are kids to trust again. Once relationships with others and society as a whole. We all about improving the teach kids how to make better choices, so that positive that trust is re-established, lives of countless children and families, behaviors can take the place of negative behaviors. kids can learn how to clear and strengthening And we promote academics and education so children away the debris of their old communities across are prepared to take on the challenges they will face in the country. the future. life and begin preparing At Boys Town, we Most importantly, we rekindle the “spirit” by helping have been so children establish a foundation of faith they can draw to move forward. successful at helping strength from every day. While respecting every — FATHER BOES people find success child’s beliefs, we encourage and support our boys because we and girls as they make faith an integral part of their understand the journey of healing. challenges kids and their families face and know the As we celebrate this holiday season, we are thankful best ways to help them. for the miracles of the heart our kids have In all of our programs, children learn new skills and experienced. Our boys and girls are especially thankful how to build healthy relationships. We bring compassion for your generous support, which helps make those and experience to the often-difficult task of getting kids miracles possible. You are always in their prayers to trust again. Once that trust is re-established, kids because they know how much you care. can learn how to clear away the debris of their old life God’s Blessings, and begin preparing to move forward. Boys Town’s unique approach is so effective because we strive to heal the body, the mind and the spirit. This way of caring for children springs directly from the principles of our founder, Father Edward Flanagan, who focused on helping the whole child — physically, academically and spiritually. Father Flanagan believed every child could succeed in life if given the right skills Father Steven E. Boes and direction. Building on that basic belief, Boys Town Boys Town National Executive Director
2 Setting Boys Town’s Sites on Widespread Care
ith multiple affiliated sites, Boys Town has a significant national presence and can serve more children and families in a wide Wvariety of ways. Boys Town often partners with local foundations, agencies and businesses to reach out to those in greatest need through residential care, in-home family services, foster care, behavioral health services, community support services and parenting classes. Each of our sites offers its own set of services and programs. All of these Nationwide Impact, services are based on the research-proven Boys Town Model® of care, so they have the same expectations for positive results and outcomes. National Support Most recently, every Boys Town site has been involved in community initiatives that identify neighborhoods with the greatest needs and focus on providing the right kinds of services in those areas. lives touched site location opened services provided ANNUALLY
Residential treatment center, intervention and BOYS TOWN assessment services, residential care, foster NEBRASKA Village of Boys Town, NE care, in-home services, parenting classes, 1917 community support services, behavioral health services, health care services 150,000
BOYS TOWN In-home services, community support Council Bluffs, IA IOWA 1989 services, parenting classes
BOYS TOWN Residential care, in-home services, foster care, Tallahassee NORTH FLORIDA 1983 community support services, parenting classes 5,000
Intervention and assessment services, BOYS TOWN residential care, in-home services, community Orlando CENTRAL FLORIDA 1986 support services, parenting classes, behavioral 7,600 health clinic
Diagnostic and assessment services, BOYS TOWN LOUISIANA New Orleans residential care, in-home services, community 7,600 1989 support services, parenting classes
BOYS TOWN In-home services, community support services, West Palm Beach SOUTH FLORIDA 1991 parenting classes, behavioral health clinic 17,000
BOYS TOWN Residential care, in-home services, foster care, Portsmouth, R.I. NEW ENGLAND 1991 community support services, parenting classes 8,000
BOYS TOWN In-home services, community support services, Las Vegas NEVADA 1991 parenting classes, behavioral health clinic 20,000
BOYS TOWN Residential care, in-home services, foster care, WASHINGTON DC Washington, D.C. community support services, parenting classes, 6,200 1993 behavioral health clinic
3 Looking to the Future to Create Brighter Futures
t one hundred years strong, Boys Town is proud of its legacy of service and its A century-long commitment to the well-being of children, families and communities. But as always, we are constantly looking to the future and how best to improve the lives of youth and families in greatest need. Boys Town’s next leap forward will involve striving to provide life- changing care for every child, every family and every community across the country. Here are four main areas where your generous support will empower us in our mission to achieve that ambitious goal.
BOYS TOWN FAMILY HOME PROGRAM Giving Kids a Second Chance through Family-Style Care In-Home Family Services (IHFS), offered at every Boys Town affiliate site, helps families stay together. efforts will be successful, but we will afe, high-quality residential develop healthy relationships with care provided through the adults and other youth, all with the continue to count on the generous Boys Town Family Home goal of finding success now and donations of our supporters to S ensure that those youth in greatest ProgramSM has been the later as a productive adult. need have an opportunity to benefit cornerstone of Boys Town’s Unfortunately, political forces are from the life-changing care mission for more than four threatening to reduce state funding Boys Town can provide. decades. Boys Town knows there that covers some of the costs of our will always be troubled boys and Family Home Program and others While our residential program girls whose serious behavioral and like it. This could mean that many continues to produce positive emotional problems require the boys and girls may not get the help outcomes for troubled children, kind of intensive care and they desperately need. Boys Town Boys Town also has made treatment we can provide in a has been a strong advocate for significant efforts to help more family-like setting. Kids in our preserving this financial support for children in their own homes so program go to school, learn skills, quality residential care around the families can stay together. are responsible for chores and country. We hope our advocacy The program most responsible for the success of this approach is In-Home Family Services (IHFS), which is now offered at every Boys Town affiliate site. This We hope our advocacy efforts will be successful, but we will preventive approach has kept large continue to count on the generous donations of our supporters to numbers of boys and girls from entering an already overburdened ensure that those youth in greatest need have an opportunity to child welfare system. It also is a more cost-efficient, cost-effective benefit from the life-changing care Boys Town can provide. approach, enabling Boys Town to use your generous donations to reach even more children and families and help them experience positive results. »
4 Youth explore construction-related careers through the expanded Career Readiness Center.
« BOYS TOWN CAREER foundational skills and direction behavior work together to influence READINESS CENTER they need to enter a career child development and expand our field. These courses include knowledge of how and why children Preparing Youth for Success welding, small-engine repair, behave in certain ways. Blending auto mechanics, construction, advanced technology with our vast in the Workplace health occupations, graphic experience and knowledge of child design, and communications hroughout Boys Town’s history, and family issues, we’ll discover new and media sciences. Plans also and better treatment methods to give our Career Readiness Center include adding culinary arts and more children a brighter future. Thas played a vital role in landscape design. Meanwhile, concerns about preparing youth to enter the Boys Town has invested in and behavioral health issues in workforce as adults. asked for the public’s support children and teens — including The Center, located in the of this campaign because it the increased use of psychotropic Village of Boys Town, Nebraska, provides students with their best drugs — are making this research is an intensive, close-knit set of opportunity for success as they more urgent than ever. programs in which high school transition into adulthood. students can find their passion, learn specific workplace skills BOYS TOWN NATIONAL and build connections with RESEARCH HOSPITAL potential employers and mentors while completing their required Groundbreaking Strides in academic courses for graduation. This instruction, along with the life Youth Care through Research skills and relationship-building strategies taught in our Family ajor progress has been made Homes, prepares our boys and at the Boys Town Center for girls to make huge strides toward MNeurobehavioral Research, a better life. located at Boys Town National Research Hospital®–West, with the An extensive remodeling and New technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) purchase of new technology called expansion project is underway will help Boys Town researchers better understand how biology and at the Career Readiness functional magnetic resonance behavior work together to influence child development. Center. The project will include imaging (fMRI). Using this state-of- adding a number of courses the-art technology, Boys Town can designed to give students the better understand how biology and See “Brighter Futures”: Page 6 5 Looking to the Future to 144,149 HOTLINE CALLS* RECEIVED IN 2016 Create Brighter Futures * Calls only;does not include emails, texts or chats Continued from Page 5
Boys Town is uniquely positioned to do this critical research in order to produce results that are more useful in the everyday care of children and to rapidly apply research findings in our own work. We have a long history of providing effective treatment for children with a wide range of disorders, and Boys Town National Research Hospital this year is celebrating its 40th year of successful translational NUMBER OF CALLS (by State) OUTSIDE THE U.S. medical research. < 1,000 Canada: 2,433 In this way, like Father Flanagan 1,000 — 5,000 Guam: 41 before us, we are changing the Puerto Rico: 187 5,000 — 10,000 way America cares for children Virgin Islands: 60 and families. 10,000 — 15,000 > 15,000 BOYS TOWN NATIONAL HOTLINE With Your Help, We Keep the parents need immediate, professional change, there are still far too many and compassionate assistance. boys and girls who could benefit Lines of Hope Open One of the most critical needs the from our help but don’t know how Hotline meets involves teens who to find it. With additional funding ore than 9 million calls and have decided to hurt themselves or and support, we could increase contacts from youth and adults take their own lives, but who at the awareness through marketing and M since 1989. last minute reach out to one of our promotion, and reach out to those More than 2,700 potential suicides Crisis Counselors in a desperate cry youth (and their families) who need prevented in recent years. for help. In thousands of situations, the unique assistance our Hotline our Crisis Counselors connect services provide. More than 179,000 calls and with those young people, provide a The only way we can continue to contacts received last year. caring ear for their problems and meet this critical need is through For more than 25 years, the save their lives by taking action to the generous support of donors Boys Town National Hotline® and stop a potential suicide. like you. Without your help, the its extended services have been Unfortunately, even with the very lives of children are at risk answering the call when children and many young lives we save and and at stake.
greatest failures of the child care his care, exploring each boy’s Father Flanagan: Visionary, system of his day. background and the individual problems Innovator, Advocate As Boys Town grew, Father Flanagan that brought him to the Home. In his used it as a testing ground, a place schools, Father Flanagan developed an rom the very start of his work with where he could develop and try out new early version of an Individual Education wayward boys, Father Flanagan’s theories and concepts for child care. He Plan for each boy and incorporated the Fintentions were to change not only kept up with the latest developments in ideas of pioneering psychologists into the course of individual lives but also education, sociology and psychology, his model of care. the whole system of care for children, and used surveys and other research This revolutionary approach — basing a reform that included doing away methods to measure the impact of the the care of children on their experiences with the abusive and dangerous care the boys were receiving at the and changing needs and using research reformatories, orphanages and Home. Much of what he learned came to measure results — is still employed workhouses that represented the from his relationships with the boys in by Boys Town today.
6 In the weeks and years that followed those first uncertain days, a movement slowly gathered momentum. With courage and faith, Father Flanagan preached his principles of child and family care to government leaders, community decision makers, child care advocates, and anyone and everyone who would listen, striking a nerve in the public’s collective conscience and slowly recruiting a small army of supporters and believers. Far ahead of his time, the good priest took child care into uncharted territory, breaking down racial and religious barriers by accepting any boy who needed help and challenging the status quo, which, until then, often meant ignoring the needs of children and denying their God-given right to be happy, healthy and hopeful about their future. Over time, Father Baskets of fruits and nuts were among the donations that made Christmas special for the boys in the early years of Flanagan established himself as a Father Flanagan’s Home for Boys (later known as Boys Town). champion of children and their causes, and Boys Town became a symbol of From Humble Beginnings difference. Discouraged, he wrote: the need for sweeping changes in “I knew that my life’s work lay in the America’s system of child care. Until to a Leader in Child and rehabilitation of these men. And yet, the day he died in 1948 at age 61, my methods were so basically wrong. Father Flanagan devoted his life to the Family Care In talking with the men, I learned that plight of children who needed they had been orphaned in childhood.... someone to believe in them. Continued from Page 1 Or, they were members of large families where income was not Now, nearly a century later, Father Christmas Eve. While it wasn’t the sufficient to care for them.... Or, again, Flanagan’s vision has proven to be fattened goose, it provided a hearty they came from families broken by 20/20 and his mission continues, meal and let Father Flanagan and the divorce. Invariably they were homeless thanks to the leadership of his boys know someone cared. “It was a and abandoned. They veered here, dedicated successors. By constantly rather humble festival,” Father were shoved there throughout their evolving to meet the changing needs Flanagan said. “But we were happy formative years and, reaching a man’s of America’s children and families, and determined to make a success of estate, were only shells of men. I knew Boys Town has grown into one of the our small institution.” that my work was not with shells of nation’s largest nonprofit child and When Father Flanagan’s Home for men, but with the embryo men — the family organizations, touching the Boys opened, it appeared to be just homeless waifs who had nowhere to lives of more than two million people another kind attempt to do something turn, no one to guide them.” every year. about the problem of hungry, The idea of providing a haven for As Boys Town moves into its second homeless orphans and back-alley boys, where they could get a positive century of service, it will shine as a ruffians. Father Flanagan saw things start in life and learn how to be beacon of hope for every child, every much differently. productive citizens, grew from that family and every community because After working in Omaha for two realization and became a reality on so many generous supporters like you years with transient men — many of that December day in Omaha. And as believe every boy and girl deserves a whom were plagued by alcoholism, more and more boys began showing happy, healthy, productive life. For illiteracy and hopelessness — the up at Father Flanagan’s doorstep, he today’s young people and for those of priest realized his efforts often were was already envisioning a grand new generations to come, the dream and too little and too late to make a real future for child care in America. the mission live on!
7 Special Year-End A Charitable Bequest: A Gift from Your Will A Wonderful Way to Support Boys Town’s Mission Opportunity: IRA of Saving Children and Healing Families Rollover Gift How to Make a Bequest f you are over age 70½, the A bequest is one of the easiest gifts you can make to significantly impact Federal government permits Boys Town’s work. Your estate-planning attorney can include a provision you to gift up to $100,000 from in your will that leaves a lasting gift to our organization. Your bequest Iyour IRA to charity without could be a gift of specific assets (such as your home, artwork or a coin increasing your taxable income collection), a cash donation of any amount or a percentage of your or paying any additional tax. estate. A bequest could also be made from the residue of your estate or These tax-free rollover gifts what is left after all gifts have been made to your heirs. could be $1,000 or $10,000 or any amount up to $100,000 this year. The gift offsets your RMD Bequest Benefits for this year. • It costs you nothing today to make a bequest. • Your bequest is free of federal estate tax. • Your bequest can be changed down the road. • You can still benefit your heirs with specific gifts. • A bequest may produce estate tax savings. • You can leave a legacy of charitable giving. Recommended Bequest Language “I give to Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Home, Boys Town, Nebraska, 68010, Tax ID Number 47-0376606, (the sum of $______or ___ percent of the rest, residue and remainder of my estate) for its general purposes.”
Call us at 888-332-3219 or email [email protected] to learn more about Charitable Bequests. You can also visit us online at boystowngift.org. With a little planning, we can help you provide for your family and give to the causes you care about. INQUIRE TODAY!
The information contained in this briefing does not constitute legal or tax advice, and it is recommended that you seek the advice of your attorney, professional tax advisor and/or financial planner prior to making arrangements for a planned gift.
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