He cared enough to change the lives of troubled teens.

He's challenging Stanislaus County to do the same.

On Tuesday, at the Modesto Centre Plaza, the founder of the New York City-based Children's Aid Society shared his program's methods for curbing teen pregnancy with more than 400 public health officials, social service workers, educators, city officials, business and church leaders from 22 California counties for the Stanislaus County Health Services Agency's "Lessons for Lifeguards" conference.

"I've learned that orthodoxy has failed, " Michael Carrera told the crowd. "Our best thinking has gotten us where we are today. If we're so good, why are there over 1,300 teen births in this country every day? If we're so good, why do over 1,100 teens have pregnancies terminated every day?"

Stanislaus County's Director of Family Planning Samantha Phillips-Bland heard Carrera's message at a conference several years ago and spearheaded efforts to bring him to Modesto. She said Carrera's message changed the way she worked with "at-risk" youth in Stanislaus County.

"I think we get mired in our check sheets and regulated bureaucracy sometimes and I think we can miss the importance of simply communicating with our young people at their level," Phillips-Bland said. "I've changed how I work with young people since I first heard him and I wanted other people to have a chance to hear him as well."

Carrera created the Children's Aid Society in 1985 to reduce the number of teen pregnancies in the Harlem neighborhood he had been working in for years without success. Five years after the program started, only six of the 170 teen involved in the program became pregnant. Results improve every year.

"one unintended teen pregnancy is too many," said Laura Tarlo Project Coordinator for the R.E.A.L. (Responsibility-Education-Attitude and Leadership) Project. "We had almost 800 teen pregnancies in Stanislaus County last year. When teens become parents too early there's a loss of educational opportunities, a loss of youth. The vast majority of teen moms are not able to finish high school."

To prevent their losses, Carrera abandoned the theories of structured self-esteem building classes and passed out his pager number to students. Program workers helped the teens open bank accounts, find jobs, apply to colleges. Programming included a job club, a family life and sex education program, medical health services, performing arts opportunities, sports opportunities and academic assessment. Carrera said their all-powerful "kryptonite for good" was caring, caring for the children they worked for as if they were their own.

"There's no genius, there's no science here," Carrera said. "Helping young people help themselves is done one at a time over days and weeks and months and years, not 50 at a time over days and weeks and months and years, not 50 at a time, not 100 at a time during a six-week course on self-esteem. I do not believe self-esteem is taught. It's caught. Young people catch it by being around adults who genuinely believe they are good and have potential."

The program's success has spread. It has now been replicated in 40 different communities in 20 different states across the country.

The county's "lessons for Lifeguards" conference continued Wednesday for Stanislaus County residents interested in implementing Carrera's program.

"There was great enthusiasm to move forward," Phillips-Bland said this morning. "For this to be successful though it has to be a public-private partnership."

The community-driven implementation process will begin March 25, with an initial organizational meeting at 1:30 p.m. in the Health Services Agency's Main Conference Room at 830 Scenic Drive in Modesto.

For more information, call the Stanislaus County Health Services Agency at 558-5322.

Used by permission of The Turlock Journal