By Tre Gabriel
Flawless Intern
“When sparks are flying the kids are changing” –
Bob Zaccheo founder of Project Lift
The Flawless team recently visited Project L.I.F.T. (Life Initiatives for Teens), a Florida-based non-profit movement, dedicated to improving the lives of at-risk teens and their families through substance use treatment, mental health counseling, mentoring, and vocational skills training. It is a place where licensed therapists are working together with skilled trade instructors to teach teens in a way that really reaches them.
Founder & Executive Director Bob Zaccheo tried to educate and help kids using more traditional methods, but he “gets more out of a kid in the first 7 minutes by putting a welding torch in their hand than I get in 7 weeks sitting down in an office.” Zaccheo is helping them replace old behavior with new skills.
Project L.I.F.T is redefining hands-on learning. 95% of the teens in the program are coming from the judicial system. After completing the 14-week L.I.F.T. program, 72% are no longer involved with the courts.
Members can choose to gain experience in a wide variety of trades, and can even explore potential career paths. Trade professionals act as volunteer instructors, teaching the teens boat building and restoration, auto-mechanics, carpentry, welding, agriculture, printing, sewing, upholstery, bicycle mechanics, instrument repair and refurbishing, electrical work, plumbing and graphic design.
If you can trust a kid with heavy machinery or a 2200 degree torch, it’s the first step towards respecting that individual by expressing trust in them. This is the guiding vision behind Project L.I.F.T It is not only a rehabilitative program, but one that is consciously working to rebuild these teenagers’ pride, something that has been stripped away from many of them due to past mistakes.
L.I.F.T. is working hard to break the discrimination they face which has damaged these kids’ self-worth. The program even goes as far as to pick them up from school in cars rather than in 12-seater vans with program logos on them, because of the negative associations of being arrested.
As we were walking through the site, Zaccheo explained to us that most of the facility was built and painted by the kids, and how much pride they took in maintaining the space. Project L.I.F.T. is a program that rebuilds kids as well as infrastructure. It gives teenagers an alternative message to the one they are used to hearing (that they have nothing to offer), empowering them to develop new skills and self-worth.
At the time I visited L.I.F.T, I had just gotten back from two major conferences with Flawless Foundation: the Kennedy Forum and Mental Health America. I could see everything I had been taught in theory about self-regulation and learned behaviors in action right before my eyes.
At The Kennedy Forum and MHA, I learned how, from a young age, we learn self regulation. As toddlers, we self-soothe by rocking back and forth. When we get older, we continue to seek out rhythmic, comforting, repetitive behaviors—running, dribbling a basketball, or walking—to keep our bodies and minds regulated.
As I watched the teenagers at Project L.I.F.T., I had the sense that they were being similarly soothed and regulated by these tasks. They seemed both calm and so engaged in their craft that they barely paid any attention to me and the other visitors. I could see how Zaccheo has not had to break up even one fist fight in nearly a decade.
We left Project Lift in awe, convinced that this blueprint should be followed everywhere. Whether it’s yoga instead of detention, class outside to break up an eight-hour day in the classroom, or getting underneath the hood of a car, I am 100% confident that our solution to helping kids who struggle with challenging behaviors lies in non-traditional methods of teaching and youth empowerment. We need to learn from flawless thought leaders like Bob Zaccheo, because it’s through finding creative solutions that we can make the biggest impact.
