Challenge Day - Inspiring Young People to Change
An interview with Program Co-Founder Rich Dutra St. John
Rich Dutra St. John, shown here with his wife Yvonne, is
a licensed family therapist and drug intervention specialist who
has worked with teens and families since 1978. Rich and
his wife Yvonne combined their collective passion and experience
to co-found the Challenge Day program in 1987. Their work has now
positively affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of youth
and adults in 39 different states and 6 Canadian Provinces. Rich,
who serves as a Challenge Day trainer/facilitator, board chairman
and head of development, is a 1993 graduate of the Hoffman Process.
Ellie Weiser: What is Challenge Day, the organization
you founded in 1987 with your wife, Yvonne?
Rich Dutra St. John: Challenge Day goes into
schools and conducts daylong experiential workshops and follow-up
programs that are designed to break down social oppression, bullying,
and violence – basically the things that happen in schools
that cause kids to feel separate and alone. The organization has
grown a lot since 1987 – we now function as a non-profit,
we’re international, and we touch more than 60,000 kids a
year, but our goals remain the same.
EW: Why did you start it?
RDSJ: Yvonne and I both know the pain of being
outsiders at school. When Yvonne was young she got teased for being
a big girl. She was so desperate to lose weight that she became
bulimic before she even knew what it was. One summer she lost a
lot of weight, and came back to school and all of a sudden she’s
super popular. It was devastating, as she remembers it, because
the kids liked her for what she was on the outside and she knew
she was the same person inside. Then she became a cheerleader and
homecoming queen, and next they’re calling her stuck-up. So
in her experience, no one wins in the crazy separation games we
play at school.
My experience wasn’t that different. I was small in junior
high and there were kids who bullied me and made my life a living
hell. I couldn’t tell my teachers because if I did the kids
would get in trouble and I’d get it worse. It wasn’t
okay to be afraid in my house so I was ashamed to tell my dad. For
a long time I simply endured it – kept it in and did what
I call “smile through the crap of life.” It’s
like, “There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m just
fine,” but I hated my life, I hated waking up, I hated going
to school. This was my experience of oppression and separation,
and it led to many days when I would have rather been dead.
EW: How did those experiences shape who you are
today?
RDSJ: In high school I grew and became a good
athlete so I was welcomed into the jock group. I saw the mean things
my “friends” were saying and doing to people, but I
didn’t have the courage to step up and say, “Stop hurting
them” because I didn’t want to get pushed out of the
popular group. So even though I graduated high school with honors
and was a star athlete, I felt ashamed, like a fraud. When I went
to college I decided that I was going to be real. I went with a
dream to be a teacher because I could remember clearly the teachers,
coaches, and others who loved and supported me from third grade
all the way through high school. I wanted to be one of those adults.
That’s what Challenge Day is for me.
EW: What do you hope Challenge Day will accomplish?
RDSJ: That this work will create a space where
every child feels safe, loved and celebrated in school. That there
might be time during every class day for young people to have one
or two minutes to actually experience the heart of a new person
in their class. Think about kids going to school asking themselves,
“I wonder who’s going to be my new friend today?”
instead of “What do I have to do to survive?”
EW: Of the spectrum of issues kids deal with
at school, what do you see as the most serious?
RDSJ: The biggest problem is not drugs or alcohol
or violence; those are symptoms of the biggest problem, which is
that most kids feel separate and alone, and their acting-out behaviors
are desperate attempts to fit in and belong. Challenge Day offers
a new vision – that love, acceptance, and compassion can indeed
exist at school.
EW: I’ve heard stories of powerful transformations
in even the toughest kids. How does Challenge Day touch their hearts
and change behaviors in only one day?
RDSJ: Our program has three stages; inclusion,
influence, and affection. In the inclusion stage,
it’s about the kids feeling like a part of the group. When
they first walk into the room, they’re very fearful and are
filled with judgments, so we have them welcome each other by playing
games. In this stage you see their walls starting to drop.
In the influence stage, the leaders share their own stories, which
gives kids permission to share theirs, so there’s an opening
of compassion. Then we do an exercise called the “Power Shuffle”
that demonstrates that everyone suffers from some kind
of oppression and no one likes it, so why do we oppress each other?
After the Power Shuffle you hear kids say they’re sorry
because they didn’t know their words were hurting –
they didn’t know why they’d been acting like they had;
it’s the only behavior they’d known in their life.
EW: That sounds similar to the experience of
the Hoffman Process.
RDSJ: Absolutely. It’s about showing that
learned behaviors might be part of their acquired personality but
[the behaviors] are not who they are. We also stress that
“hurting people hurt people.” No one hurts another unless
they’ve been hurt, because none of us is born mean. If we’ve
learned it, we can unlearn it – we have that power.
EW: Since the late ’90s, America has had
to acknowledge and address school bullying. Is Challenge Day more
relevant now that this issue is in the public consciousness?
RDSJ: The receptivity for having a school environment
where kids feel safe, loved, and celebrated – which is our
vision – has increased. We were in Colorado a week following
the Columbine tragedy – kids from Columbine and the Mile High
Church came to the Challenge Day. One of the shooter’s best
friends was there and she just cried and said if he would have had
a Challenge Day, it’s less likely he would have done it. It
was a beautiful and tragic moment. So yes, as we share our spirits’
and our hearts’ purpose, we are continuously reminded that
what we do is very much needed.
EW: With so many kids in school experiencing
fear, separateness and other negative emotions, how hard is it for
them to gain an education?
RDSJ: Very. “Education” comes from
the root word “educare,” which means to draw out. At
Challenge Day, we believe if you draw out a person’s dreams,
they can learn anything. But how can dreams be accessed when there
are so many unresolved emotions competing for a kid‘s attention?
To explain this to young people, we use the image of an “emotional
balloon.” The balloon demonstrates that feelings don’t
just go away – they store in the body and every time you have
an unexpressed emotion or you don’t feel safe to express who
you are, the balloon gets bigger and bigger until it either leaks
with sarcasm, violence, screaming, or it pops.
EW: Do kids understand this?
RDSJ: Absolutely. We show that if you have healthy,
safe places to go and ways to share your feelings, the balloon doesn’t
pop. We explain that comparing our insides to other people’s
outsides makes us feel separate and alone, but at Challenge Day
they see, “Oh, I’m not broken, I’m just hurting
like these other kids.” There’s huge comfort in knowing
you’re not alone.
EW: You did the Process in 1993. What led you
there?
RDSJ: I was a licensed therapist who was teaching
compassion to others and I realized I needed to find compassion
in me – especially for family members. The Process led to
an amazing healing with my dad, with whom I’d had a tough
relationship. For the first time, I could truly forgive him and
not be a victim of my past. I remember coming home from the Process
and handing him a list of the ideals he taught me, which I wanted
to live into, and that built a strong foundation for us.
To give you the full circle, last year Challenge Day had an open
house at our new building. My dad was there, standing in the circle
with all of us, and when he said his name the whole group spontaneously
stood up and gave him a standing ovation, and he started crying.
In that moment I saw that for the first time in his life, he understood
that he was celebrated simply for being, not for doing. From there
we went to dinner and talked about where we still needed to forgive
and what we wanted to let go of. Later he said it was the best night
of his life.
EW: Did your vision for Challenge Day change
after you did the Process?
RDSJ: I got that Challenge Day is bigger than
anything I’d dreamt of – that it was more spiritual
and that the work is a gift we’ve been invited to
shepherd.
EW: Does Challenge Day expose young people to
the notion of a Spiritual Self?
RDSJ: Yes, and it’s amazing! We tell kids
to look inside their hearts, and whatever it is that gives them
goose bumps is what they’re supposed to be doing with their
lives. Sometimes they’ll do the exercise and say, “Money
gives me goose-bumps – I want to make lots of money.”
We explain that if they follow their hearts and make money, that’s
great. But if money is the end, no amount of it will make them happy
if they’re not living their life’s purpose. You can
see the look in their eyes when they get it!
EW: Challenge Day teaches young people to look
inward for happiness. Some people don’t do this until much
later in life, or after they do the Process.
RDSJ: We see firsthand that the kind of joy that
starts with self-love breeds more joy, just like negativity breeds
more negativity. People will say to Yvonne and me, “Gosh,
you two look so young,” and we say it’s because we’re
living a life of joy. My goal is to someday be a really old man
who people look at and say, “That man is happy! I
want what he has!” I am committed to helping people understand
that none of us are broken – the joy is inside each of us
and it’s our job to access it.
EW: To coin a Challenge Day expression, thanks,
Rich, for being the change you want to see.
RDSJ: Thank you – it’s great to bring
our message to the Hoffman community. n
For more information, visit www.challengeday.org
or phone 925/957-0234.
|
