PACT’s Purpose

PACT’s Purpose as stated in its Articles of Incorporation:
The specific purpose of this corporation is to provide opportunity for economically disadvantaged people and youth who are plagued by violence
and substance abuse in their homes and communities, through economical empowerment and by improving their educational skills, values, and
self-esteem.

PACT’s Mission as included on our letterhead:
Positive Alternative Choices Today: Mentored work, learning, fun and play
to empower at risk 9-15 year olds.

PACT is unique in all the land. Our Work Ethics Education program (WE) has not only been our basic source of financial support (98% in 2005), it is the vehicle of our unique and structured one-on-one adult mentoring for LA at risk boys and girls.

Innovative, PACT is like Sony when it invented the Walkman. At first, nobody knew they needed one. That took a strategic plan and marketing. So too it is with PACT. Satellites are planned once the people of Los Angeles County and beyond get to know what PACT does for at risk 9-15 year olds, including its new Life and Education Empowerment Program (LEEP).

PACT’s Current Mentoring Operations

Through PACT’s Work Ethics Apprentice Mentors, our 9-15 year olds learn responsibility and the rewards of work: income, recreation, and education. They earn money. They build self-esteem. They meet and present
themselves to all manner of adults. This adult-mentored worklike experience
is the key element of PACT’s Work Ethics Education. PACT's children travel
to and see how successful people live in the Los Angeles area.They are
being acculturated.

Of the upwards of 1000 kids who have been in PACT’s Work Ethics Program, only four have landed in Juvenile Hall. That’s a 99% prevention record! (PACT has its own internal "justice system.")

The unique combination of a structured, mentored, one on one worklike experience with the other elements of the PACT program— and the fact that it is this work that has supported PACT for thirteen years— is behind our letters of encouragement from the President and First Lady (1998), Gov. Pete Wilson (1998), Gov. Gray Davis (2000), Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger(2004), Councilman and now Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (2004), Mayor Richard Riordan (1999) and Mayor James Hahn (2002), Senator Dianne Feinstein, Council-men Rosendahl, Parks and Supervisor Yaroslavsky and many more.

On July 27, 2006 the California State Legislature cited and commended PACT’s work with at risk children.

PACT’s Learning Capabilities Mentors

The 2007 pilot test of PACT's Life and Education Empowerment Program (LEEP), partially funded by the Del Rey Neighborhood Council and with the cooperation of Del Rey Middle School counselors, proved once again that PACT's structured one-on-one mentored approach inspires at risk 9-15 year olds to achievement.

Adults and bright high school students readily volunteered to meet with the same child once week at the Mar Vista Branch Library for ten weeks, to lead them through the 150-page workbook, derived individually from each child's three-hour, timed, segmented assessment of 24 learning and thinking abilities. Made forever self-conscious of their learning and thinking abilities through the mentoring and the followup three-hour assessment, children achieved better grades in school as well. (LEEP is PACT's high school dropout prevention program.)

PACT’s Storybook Focus on Values

In 2005, YEPP! (Youth Empowerment Peace Program) was approved as a new division of PACT and became a certified after school program of LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District). Its first four week workshop, February 22nd to March 20th 2006, for 20 fifth graders at the Virginia Elementary Roads school, was a declared an unqualified success by Principal Jackyln Thompson.

YEPP! is founded on the story book, created and published by Seth King and his brothers. Seth changed career direction after working with PACT’s young apprentices for five years. He is now director of YEPP! which provides a structured exploration workshop through which children learn "The Power is
in their Hands," each finger empowering a value: freedom, justice, truth, create, teach, love,unity, peace, intelligence, cooperation. In the YEPP! Workshop twenty youngsters learn about many inspiring leaders and important role models like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Mother Theresa, Dalai Lama, and Helen Keller, each selected by the kids to represent one of the ten values.

YEPP!’s first program culminated with its graduates generating EMPOWERMENT, LOVE, UNITY, PEACE, and CELEBRATION for their entire school community: the student body, teachers, volunteers and their families. All were uplifted by the personal warmth and music of blind pianist, singer, whistler Howle "Smitty" Smith. (In 2002, LA’s highly regarded Smitty, recorded the title song for PACT’s seven minute video "It’s a Wonder-Full World.")

Inspired by this premier, Virgina Elementary participants hit on “Fly Like an Eagle” as the appropriate title to carry YEPP!s message, beginning with three other elementary schools. (The Eagle is Virginia Elementary School’s mascot.)

YEPP! is and will always be available to LAUSD students FREE of charge thanks to the generous contributions of people who are committed to the L.A. Community. We are currently seeking YEPP! Volunteers willing to assist as mentors and tutors for students in the Los Angeles Area. YEPP! Volunteers are also in training to become future YEPP! Leaders. YEPP! Leadership is an exceptionally good experience for future teachers, college students, or anyone looking for a way to stand up powerfully for children in the L.A. community.

We are also seeking positive musicians and artists who wish to promote peace and youth empowerment through YEPP! Performance Day events! In the long term, YEPP! is committed to making a lasting and permanent difference in all elementary and middle schools in Los Angeles. Thus, there is the potential for future opportunities opening up within YEPP! as we continue to grow as well.

YEPP! empowers students and builds school community! For more information, to volunteer, to make a tax-deductible contribution, or to connect or assist us in any way, please contact YEPP! Director Seth D. King via e-mail directly at yepp2020@comcast.net.

The PACT Organization

Positive Alternative Choices Today (PACT)

A 5O1(c)3 non-profit public benefit corporation chartered July 25, 1994
IRS permanent exemption status granted November 16, 1999
Fed ID # 95-4487565
State # C-1748103
LAPD Charity Registration # W1291
2005 Overhead: 15.3%

L. Schilling Photo

PACT’s Board of Directors is composed of nine professionals and entrepreneurs, including one former PACT mentor and one former PACT apprentice. William R. Ewald, its Chairman and CEO, merited recognition in, Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in Finance and Industry, and Who’s Who in California in
the 1990s.

A graduate of Brown University, with postgraduate study at the University
of Michigan, Cornell and Harvard, Mr. Ewald worked for major architects
and planners and then in policy roles in city, state and federal government
before establishing his strategic development consultancy office in Washington DC in 1963.

He has led projects funded by the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, National Science Foundation, U.S. Public Health Service, HEW, Commerce, NASA, American Institute of Architects, American Institute of Planners, Winthrop Rockefeller, Interior, Urban Renewal Administration, New York State, Arkansas, Puerto Rico, General Electric , and Weyerhaeuser.

PACT Board Of Directors