Louisiana National Guard Youth Challenge Program - Gillis W. Long Center — Local services in St. Gabriel

Are you always looking for that one special person (or program) that will turn your life around and make you truly happy... well, YCP is NOT going to do that for you.

First, you need to take a good hard look in the mirror. No one is more accountable for your previous failures, and no one will ever be more committed to your future success than YOU!

Before YCP or anyone can be of any real help to you, you need to be at a point where you are finally committed, at least to some degree, to take ownership of your own life.

This means to stop blaming others as always being most responsible for everything that's wrong... to stop always looking to others to fulfill your needs as though you are entitled to be given whatever you want or need to be happy in life, and if not given to you, to then just take what is not yours without remorse.. and to stop rebelling, resisting and defying authority figures anywhere and everywhere they crop up.

If you have finally grown up enough to realize some morcel of truth to these hard-to-face facts of life... then YCP can make an enormous positive difference IF YOU ARE TRULY COMMITTED TO DO THE HARD WORK that is always required to accomplish anything worthwhile.

YCP will put your feet on a much more solid footing and point you down a new path filled with enormous positive changes in your self-image and self-confidence, in your attitudes, habits and lifestyle, in your physical and mental health, and in your academic skill levels - hopefully culminating as a GED graduate in just 22 weeks.

The vast majority of cadets that graduate from YCP walk the stage beaming with pride feeling significantly more motivated to pursue their dreams. Whether that means attending trade school to become certified and able to make a good living doing what they love to do, or joining the military to do the same "free of charge" with great fringe benefits along the way , or going on to college to pursue a more professional career path to fulfill a life-long dream.. it matters not which path they choose to take. It's the new-found confidence and enthususism YCP graduates take with them to pursue such dreams at all that is truly life altering!

In the some 20 years I have worked with at-risk youth under several different programs, YCP is without a doubt the most powerful in terms of truly transforming the lives of a high percentage of those completing the program. It literally saves and resorrects hundreds of our most at-risk youth every year with...

2 handfuls of girls in 1st platoon caught lice and were not treated the nurses said "they didnt know what they were looking for" because they were african american. The girls were left untreated for a long time which made the lice spread. Eventually, i told my mother and she called the lead nurse Major Bonen and after the phone call with my mother she took it out on me that my mother yelled at her because she wasnt doing her job. This is just one example on how horrible in my opinion the youth is treated at the YCP...

ABSOLUTELY LOVED GOING HERE IN 2015. This place and those wonderful people saved my life and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. HARD is an understatement but if you push through those first couple of weeks (ESPECIALLY THE FIRST DAY... WHEEWWW THAT WAS ROUGH HAHA!!) it got easier, they broke you all the way down and built you back up as strong as they could make you. LOVE YALL~ E. LeBlanc Platoon 1...