Monday, April 29, 2024
FATHER FIGURES: Young men in sixth through 12th grade learn how to handle various tools like a power saw through Advance Camp, a program that teaches practical skills to boys who don’t have a father figure in their lives.
SPICK AND SPAN: Advance Camp teaches skills to young men that would normally be taught by their fathers. Since the camp originated in 2018, 35 campers have come through the camp and have learned skills like how to wash a truck, as pictured above.
NAILED IT: Advance Camp currently has 26 different topics of skills that are taught to young men, which include cooking, auto detailing, small engine repair and working with tools.
ANY FIN IS POSSIBLE: The team of volunteers at Advance Camp are in the process of creating additional topics for a total of 36 lessons. Skills like 3D printing and RC cars will also be offered along with preparing fish.
Growing up without a father can be tough on young boys, especially when they don’t have a role model to teach them life lessons like how to change a flat tire or how to catch a fish.
Through the efforts of one Hood County couple, the dream of having a father figure has now become a reality for many local teens.
Local husband-and-wife team Chad and Kelsey Wallen felt compelled to follow the path of fostering and later, mentoring, when they lived in Oregon in 2015. The call to mentor young men was extremely strong for Chad, which led to the eventual founding of Advance Camp, a program specifically designed for fatherless young men in sixth through 12th grade to learn about practical skills that they otherwise would not learn in their home.
“It originally started just because I had a heart to mentor young men, but what really actually caused me to launch into it even more seriously is the statistic of the incarcerated — 75% of men incarcerated are from fatherless homes nationally,” Chad said. “Our baseline for our foundation is prevention, so we take young men that are at risk of incarceration, homelessness, suicide, behavioral disorders and mass shooters, and we give them trade skills, identity and foundational skills that will allow them to launch into other paths.”
Chad and Kelsey moved to Granbury in 2018, where they founded the official Advance Camp national headquarters. Chad said that the Oregon location “died” and was relaunched by the couple in 2021.
EXPANSION
Now, with Granbury as the base, an Advance Camp is also located in Florida, with a Tennessee location set to open in early 2023 and the possibility of adding a Stephenville location also in discussion.
“Our LLC is birthed out of Granbury, but now we are a national nonprofit to be able to help the United States and all the fatherless out of Granbury, which is kind of neat,” Chad said. “I want the locals in Granbury to understand we're making an impact here to our community. This is our hub, this is our focus, and this is where we learned everything, but then we can hone those skills, and go on mission to other states.”
Advance Camp currently holds a camp one Saturday a month, with the topics varying from duck hunting to cooking to remote control cars.
"What we've found is actually when we can build into these young men's lives value, confidence and purpose, they actually will go to a trade rather than saying, ‘Well, my dad was incarcerated, so I'm going to become incarcerated’ or ‘My dad was a dealer, so I'm going to become a dealer.’ Now, they say, ‘My dad was a dealer. Well, I found a love for blacksmithing, so I'm gonna become a farrier.’ We're giving them those avenues to build up their confidence in a path other than incarceration or homelessness,” Chad said.
CAMP TOPICS
Some past Advance Camp subjects include auto detailing, small engine repair, general contracting and a survival camp.
“Some of the (camps) are versions of others, so like cooking is a perfect example. We have cowboy cooking, grilling, barbecuing and smoking — which are two very different things — and house cooking,” Chad said. “3D printing, we’re bringing it in December. We've never done that before. We're actually gonna (teach them) how to build a lightsaber, so we're gonna give them a functional lightsaber and then we'll use 3D printing to build custom handles.”
Chad said Advance Camp currently has 26 different topics that are taught to young men, but his team of volunteers are in the process of expanding to 36.
“The goal is to have three years of curriculum written. Big picture, we're looking at being able to plant in churches to have activities so a church can pick up Advance Camp. I'll have biblical curriculum and activity curriculum and they can run their camp on a three-year cycle,” Chad said. “It's all kinds of stuff that we just feel like a guy should've learned this from their dad that impacted them. It could be just a fun side hustle or something that can really put them on a pathway for a career.”
Since the program first began, Chad said 35 campers have come through the Texas camp, 11 have gone through the Oregon camp and 21 have participated in the Florida camp.
“We try to do a campout every year just to be able to have time around the campfire. It breaks down walls and we can build a relationship with these young men. They just don't have guys that are there just to walk beside them to live life with,” he said.
PROGRAM ADDITIONS
Chad has recently started a virtual biblical foundation class that takes place every Monday night involving campers from all three states. By the end of this year, he plans to start a program called Pathways Partner.
“We're looking for businesses that say, ‘Hey, we need employees,’ and we're paying recruiting companies like Indeed, to get employees,” he said. “Now they can commit to teaching the camp for us, become a sponsor of the camp and then they get to speak in these young men's lives of recruiting them. Right now, we have a farrier, a home builder, a general contractor, an auto detail company and a bicycle shop. We're looking for businesses that want to come beside us and financially support us and that gives them the opportunity to share their trade with the young men as they get old enough to recruit them into their business and train them.”
Campers gather at Stonewater Church in Granbury each month and from there, they are taken to wherever the trade lessons are being held that week.
Although Granbury’s Advance Camp has now been established for four years, Chad said there still isn’t a main facility that they can call home.
“We are still looking for what we call a permanent home, somewhere that we can utilize for a point of meeting somewhere that we can teach vocational skills,” he said. “My goal is big, big picture eight to 10 years, to have a facility that these young men can come to us as an after-school program, and teach them welding, plumbing, electrical and they can leave high school already on the path to follow a trade so they don't get lost in the shuffle somewhere not knowing what they're gonna do when they graduate high school. Plus, it also gives us an opportunity to encourage them to stay in high school because 71% of high school dropouts are from fatherless homes, so we want to make sure that we can keep these young men on the path to graduate high school and then trade once they get out.”
To help with funds associated with providing a building for the program, Chad has started a fundraising campaign for Advance Camp.
"We need 100 donations of $40 a month to be able to gain growth in Texas and then the other states as well, but we're at 23 of the 100,” he said. “If I could get 100 people to do this, like this will literally change the trajectory of Advance Camp and our impact on the fatherless community.”
Parents can sign their son up for Advance Camp by texting or calling Chad at 503-510-1861 or by sending him an email at chad@advancecampusa.com.
To donate to the fundraiser, visit advancecampusa.com/becauseofyou.
