2005 06 01 COMMEND "Daniel Perkins" LETTER

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• June 1, 2005
• To: Christy Bartley, Brenda Bernatowicz, Marilyn Corbin, Mary Jo Depp-Nestlerode, Tracy Hoover, Daney Jackson, Margaret Koble, Robert Steele, Craig Weidemann
• From: Daniel F. Perkins
• Re: Youth Engaged in Technology -- PA CYFAR New Communities Project
• At the National CYFAR meeting last week, the PA CYFAR team was surprised and pleased to see that one of our pictures [shot by Barton James Christner] ended up on the cover of the National CYFAR Annual Report. The cover picture was a youth from the Washington County Youth Engaged in Technology (YET) program. (Please note that USDA CREES refers to CYFAR as Children, Youth, and Families At Risk; however we refer to CYFAR as Children, Youth, Families Are Resilient). If you have not visited the CYFAR website please do so at http://www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/family/cyfar/cyfar.html. I would also suggest you check out our webpage at: http://cyfar.cas.psu.edu/.
• Here is a little information about the young man in the picture. He has attention deficit disorder, suffers from severe allergies and asma, poor grades, and is often sent to detention for disruptive behaviors. He is a member of the boy scouts, for now, but has fallen years behind his same aged colleagues, and nearly quit several times in the past year. His mother informed me that she had become concerned that he was giving up his efforts to accomplish much. Last summer, YET took him to PSU Nano-Camp and literally changed his life. The experience opened his eyes to something more than he had ever imagined possible. He became fascinated by the hairs inside the eye of a bee, viewed through an electron microscope, mesmerized by the properties of liquid nitrogen, and awed by something he never dreamed he could grasp... superconductivity. Upon returning to Washington, PA, we held a "Parent Night," and the young people stood up in front of a dozen parents, and described their experiences. He presented to his parents his Nano-Camp adventures and accomplishments. Afterward, his mother pulled me aside and said, "that's the most interested... no, the most excited that he's been all year! No, maybe in his entire life!"