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Stand Together Against Poverty

He was looking at a life sentence. Now he's giving others a second chance.

He was looking at a life sentence. Now he's giving others a second chance.

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At 38 years old, Dave Durocher was looking at a life sentence.

Dave Durocher. All images in this post by Upworthy and Stand Together.

He was a self-professed corruptor who'd ruined people's lives. As a high-level drug dealer, he'd already spent years in prison. After completing a two-year sentence, he immediately went back to selling drugs then was arrested again. He did a five-year prison sentence that time. Then a six-year sentence. Then a 10-year sentence. Four consecutive prison sentences.

His was the story you hear about and would think - “people like that will never change." And based on Dave's pattern of behavior, you'd be right. Being incarcerated had become a way of life for Dave. So, he decided he was going to make a name for himself on the inside." He'd always be at the top of the food chain. He'd always be calling the shots.

Unfortunately, the mentality of survival at all costs, fueled by hate worked against him. It made him more venomous which, in turn, made life in prison even more unbearable.

“Prison is a hate factory..." Dave said. “It's like high school with knives."

After completing his 10-year sentence Dave promised himself he'd never live behind bars again. But that didn't mean he was planning on changing his ways. Without an alteration in habits, mindset, or behavior, he had no plan to live a crime-free life once he got out - it was what he knew - and what he was good at. So, unfortunately, he went right back to dealing drugs shortly after being released.

"Jails aren't conducive to change, prisons aren't conducive to change," he says. "They aren't designed to be."

The same habits and behaviors he'd mastered through crime, deceit and manipulation were still there and hadn't changed. His pattern of behavior caught up to him again.

As the police closed in on him during a high-speed chase, Dave attempted to take his own life - knowing if caught, he would spend the rest of his life in prison, a place he'd promised himself he would never go back to.

He failed and was arrested yet again, which was his breaking point. Dave knew deep-down that he wanted more out of life than this revolving door of crime, death, and hate. But up to this point, he hadn't been able to break his own destructive cycle. Why would anyone give him another chance? He didn't deserve one.

He wanted to change, but didn't know how to take that first step.

“When someone is ready to change their life and says, 'I need to do something different, but I need help?' Where do you send them?" Dave said.

Faced with a life sentence (another 29 years) Dave begged for leniency in court. He'd heard about an innovative program for individuals just like him, and pleaded with the judge to be sent there as a last chance to change his life.

The judge heard his pleas and gave him a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend the program. If Dave was able to complete it, he would not have to return to prison.

"Plead guilty for all charges and I'm going to send you to Delancey Street," Dave remembers the judge saying. "If you get kicked out, I've got you for the rest of your life."

Dave couldn't take the deal fast enough. But he also quickly learned that Delancey Street, a long-term (minimum of two years) peer-to-peer life-skills and vocational training program with a focus on social responsibility, wasn't going to be easy. At first, he started sliding back into his old ways of communicating — being arrogant, pompous, giving in to his ego and encouraging others around him to slip back into negative behaviors.

One day, Dave exploded at his program leader, telling the man that he'd never get what it was like to have served time.

“He said, 'I'm not here to tell you about your past, I'm here to tell you about how to change your life,'" Dave remembers.

That was a moment he'll never forget. It helped him realize he wanted to help others, too.

Dave was mandated to stay at Delancey Street for two years. He voluntarily stayed for eight, and ran Delancey's Los Angeles facility as its Managing Director for the last 5 years of his stay.

Today, Dave is the managing director of The Other Side Academy, another long-term residential training center similar to Delancey Street that helps people exiting prison, or recovering from a substance use disorder, completely transform their lives and reconnect with their communities.

Dave's past embodies the sobering rate of recidivism in America. Through his own experience he knew that the programs for people who had been convicted weren't working. 30, 60, and 90-day programs aren't enough to create wholly impactful change. With recidivism as high as 70 percent (or more) among those released from prison, Dave knew that people were leaving those programs and going right back to a life of crime.

So, in 2015, when he became the Managing Director of The Other Side Academy, he vowed to change that.

The focus of the program isn't just about abstinence from substance use — which Dave calls the easy part — it involves a complete change in character and behavior. The staff helps the program participants develop integrity and accountability through work and intense peer-feedback as they run the social enterprises that generate the revenue to support the operational costs of the program.

So far, the methodology is working.

Thanks to constant peer-to-peer feedback, the opportunity to stay in the facility long-term, and a focus on underlying behavior change, within its first three years of operation, 98 percent of the program's participants have not re-offended.

The Other Side Academy doesn't take any money from outside sources — the program generates it through business enterprises they've created in-house and through partnerships with nonprofits like Stand Together.

Stand Together is an organization that seeks to break the cycle of poverty in America by developing and investing in innovative solutions that target problems at the community level. The Other Side Academy participated in Stand Together's Catalyst Program in 2018, which provides business management training and helps social entrepreneurs develop a vision for growth based on their core capabilities and partners with them to increase their impact.

Today, Stand Together is helping The Other Side Academy expand to serve more individuals in their comprehensive and immersive program by investing to help them purchase a new 160-room facility, which will enable them to grow their programming, serve and employ more individuals, and build new social enterprises.

For Dave, that assistance allows him to give as many people as possible a new lease on life.

“I spent the first half of my life helping people die," he says. "I intend on spending the rest of it helping them live."

To learn more about Dave Durocher and the Other Side Academy, check out the video below:

Stand Together invests in solving the biggest problems facing our nation today in order to unleash the potential in every individual, regardless of their zip code. By supporting social entrepreneurs like Durocher who're close to social issues like recidivism and have developed innovative solutions, the company is helping combat these issues in ways that are working. You can get involved and find a transformative org near you at Standtogetheragainstpoverty.org.

To find out which of these organizations supports your values, take this quiz here and let Stand Together do the searching for you.

Learn More About Stand Together

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How a middle school P.E. teacher is transforming the lives of his students

Photo courtesy of Yoplait

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When Benny Mendez asked his middle school P.E. students why they wanted to participate in STOKED—his new after school program where kids can learn to skateboard, snowboard, and surf—their answers surprised him.

I want to be able to finally see the beach, students wrote. I want to finally be able to see the snow.

Never having seen snow is understandable for Mendez's students, most who live in Inglewood, CA, just outside of Los Angeles. But never having been to the beach is surprising, since most of them only live 15-20 minutes from the ocean. Mendez discovered many of them don't even know how to swim.

"A lot of the kids shared that they just want to go on adventures," says Mendez. "They love nature, but...they just see it in pictures. They want to be out there."

Mendez is in his third year of teaching physical education at View Park K-8 school, one of seven Inner City Foundation Education schools in the Los Angeles area. While many of his students are athletically gifted, Mendez says, they often face challenges outside of school that limit their opportunities. Some of them live in neighborhoods where it's unsafe to leave their houses at certain times of day due to gang activity, and many students come to his P.E. class with no understanding of why learning about physical health is important.

"There's a lot going on at home [with my students]," says Mendez. "They're coming from either a single parent home, or foster care. There's a lot of trauma behind what's going on at home...that is out of our control."

Photo courtesy of Yoplait

What Mendez can control is what he gives his students when they're in his care, which is understanding, some structure, and the chance to try new things. Mendez wakes up at 4:00 a.m. most days and often doesn't get home until 9:00 p.m. as he works tirelessly to help kids thrive. Not only does he run after school programs, but he coaches youth soccer on the weekends as well. He also works closely with other teachers and guidance counselors at the school to build strong relationships with students, and even serves as a mentor to his former students who are now in high school.

Now Mendez is earning accolades far and wide for his efforts both in and out of the classroom, including a surprise award from Yoplait and Box Tops for Education.

Yoplait and Box Tops are partnering this school year to help students reach their fullest potential, which includes celebrating teachers and programs that support that mission. Yoplait is committed to providing experiences for kids and families to connect through play, so teaming up with Box Tops provided an opportunity to support programs like STOKED.

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Culture

Four big takeaways from National Geographic's new 'Fauci' documentary

National Geographic/YouTube

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci

When I first saw the preview of National Geographic's documentary about Anthony Fauci, I was confused. My assumption was that the documentary was made to profile his role in the COVID-19 pandemic response as that's how he became a household name. How did the filmmakers know they would need to get footage of Fauci at the very beginning of the pandemic, when no one knew yet what it would become?

The answer is: They didn't. This film was never intended to be about this pandemic at all. The profile of Anthony Fauci was planned by award-winning filmmakers John Hoffman and Janet Tobias in 2018 and they began filming in the fall of 2019, several months before anyone had even heard of SARS-CoV-2. The filmmakers originally planned to highlight Fauci as a lesser-known public servant, focusing primarily on his work throughout the AIDS pandemic.

What they ended up with is parallel stories of Fauci's AIDS work and Fauci's COVID response, and their "lesser-known" subject becoming a superstar during the making of the film. In fact, the press release for the film included the following, which is an unusual disclaimer but one the filmmakers felt necessary in the current climate: "Dr. Fauci had no creative control over the film. He was not paid for his participation, nor does he have any financial interest in the film's release."

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Tory Burch Empowered Women

Empowered Women

Military spouses often choose their spouse's career over their own. This organization is changing that.

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When Sue Hoppin was in college, she met the man she was going to marry. "I was attending the University of Denver, and he was at the Air Force Academy," she says. "My dad had also attended the University of Denver and warned me not to date those flyboys from the Springs."

"He didn't say anything about marrying one of them," she says. And so began her life as a military spouse.

The life brings some real advantages, like opportunities to live abroad — her family got to live all around the US, Japan, and Germany — but it also comes with some downsides, like having to put your spouse's career over your own goals.

"Though we choose to marry someone in the military, we had career goals before we got married, and those didn't just disappear."

Career aspirations become more difficult to achieve, and progress comes with lots of starts and stops. After experiencing these unique challenges firsthand, Sue founded an organization to help other military spouses in similar situations.

Sue had gotten a degree in international relations because she wanted to pursue a career in diplomacy, but for fourteen years she wasn't able to make any headway — not until they moved back to the DC area. "Eighteen months later, many rejections later, it became apparent that this was going to be more challenging than I could ever imagine," she says.

Eighteen months is halfway through a typical assignment, and by then, most spouses are looking for their next assignment. "If I couldn't find a job in my own 'hometown' with multiple degrees and a great network, this didn't bode well for other military spouses," she says.

She's not wrong. Military spouses spend most of their lives moving with their partners, which means they're often far from family and other support networks. When they do find a job, they often make less than their civilian counterparts — and they're more likely to experience underemployment or unemployment. In fact, on some deployments, spouses are not even allowed to work.

Before the pandemic, military spouse unemployment was 22%. Since the pandemic, it's expected to rise to 35%.

Sue eventually found a job working at a military-focused nonprofit, and it helped her get the experience she needed to create her own dedicated military spouse program. She wrote a book and started saving up enough money to start the National Military Spouse Network (NMSN), which she founded in 2010 as the first organization of its kind.

"I founded the NMSN to help professional military spouses develop flexible careers they could perform from any location."

"Over the years, the program has expanded to include a free digital magazine, professional development events, drafting annual White Papers and organizing national and local advocacy to address the issues of most concern to the professional military spouse community," she says.

Not only was NMSN's mission important to Sue on a personal level she also saw it as part of something bigger than herself.

"Gone are the days when families can thrive on one salary. Like everyone else, most military families rely on two salaries to make ends meet. If a military spouse wants or needs to work, they should be able to," she says.

"When less than one percent of our population serves in the military," she continues, "we need to be able to not only recruit the best and the brightest but also retain them."

"We lose out as a nation when service members leave the force because their spouse is unable to find employment. We see it as a national security issue."

"The NMSN team has worked tirelessly to jumpstart the discussion and keep the challenges affecting military spouses top of mind. We have elevated the conversation to Congress and the White House," she continues. "I'm so proud of the fact that corporations, the government, and the general public are increasingly interested in the issues affecting military spouses and recognizing the employment roadblocks they unfairly have faced."

"We have collectively made other people care, and in doing so, we elevated the issues of military spouse unemployment to a national and global level," she adds. "In the process, we've also empowered military spouses to advocate for themselves and our community so that military spouse employment issues can continue to remain at the forefront."

Not only has NMSN become a sought-after leader in the military spouse employment space, but Sue has also seen the career she dreamed of materializing for herself. She was recently invited to participate in the public re-launch of Joining Forces, a White House initiative supporting military and veteran families, with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.

She has also had two of her recommendations for practical solutions introduced into legislation just this year. She was the first in the Air Force community to show leadership the power of social media to reach both their airmen and their military families.

That is why Sue is one of Tory Burch's "Empowered Women" this year. The $5,000 donation will be going to The Madeira School, a school that Sue herself attended when she was in high school because, she says, "the lessons I learned there as a student pretty much set the tone for my personal and professional life. It's so meaningful to know that the donation will go towards making a Madeira education more accessible to those who may not otherwise be able to afford it and providing them with a life-changing opportunity."

Most military children will move one to three times during high school so having a continuous four-year experience at one high school can be an important gift. After traveling for much of her formative years, Sue attended Madeira and found herself "in an environment that fostered confidence and empowerment. As young women, we were expected to have a voice and advocate not just for ourselves, but for those around us."

To learn more about Tory Burch and Upworthy's Empowered Women program visit https://www.toryburch.com/empoweredwomen/. Nominate an inspiring woman in your community today!

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