President’s Message
Beginning a New Chapter
Summer 2010
As I write this, we are winding down a very eventful spring here at the Board of Child Care. It has been a time of celebration for many of the youth in our programs - more than 30 in all - as they walked across the stage to earn high school diplomas or successfully passed GED exams.
For most of these young people, their diplomas were earned not just through hard work academically, but by overcoming obstacles. Some of them, like our Strawbridge School keynote graduation speaker Latoya B., could not read or write until well into middle or high school. Many of them were turned off to school at a very young age. Some of them had behavior issues with teachers and administrators, and some of them did not have families encouraging or instilling values in them toward education.
Through support and perseverance, they gained a valuable tool that will help them build a bright future for themselves. In my remarks to the graduating class at our Strawbridge School, I compared their accomplishments to that of running a marathon. Running 26 miles is an amazing athletic feat, but the real work is not on the actual race day but in all the training leading up to race day.
All of the hard work these students placed into earning a firm educational foundation has now better prepared them to independently venture into adulthood. We are happy to have supported them in their accomplishment.
At the same time these youth are entering new chapters in their lives, BCC is also entering a new chapter as an agency. After overcoming many obstacles ourselves, we broke ground on a new Eastern Shore group home for boys in June. This is our first facility on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the first to directly serve the Peninsula-Delaware Conference of The United Methodist Church. The 16-bed facility on 114 acres will meet a long sought need within the eight counties on the Shore to provide services to their children within their own communities. It won’t be long before you will be hearing about the accomplishments of the boys in this program as well.
We thank all those friends of BCC who have supported our Eastern Shore project and your continued support of our other programs and our youth, including this year's graduates.
Thomas L. Curcio
President and CEO
