Travoll Payne, 16, knew he had leadership potential but hadn’t really put it to the test until he went through a ropes course run by Pulaski County Youth Services.
The course is tucked away in the woods behind a recreation center and park in the Higgins community. A typical use for such courses is to foster teamwork among corporate workers and other groups. When weather permits, the course is open to any group willing to pay the fee of $15 per person for half a day or $30 per person for a full day.
Pulaski County uses the fee income to pay for youth-services programs, such as ACT preparation, cooking classes, after-school tutoring, a public-service internship program and the Pulaski County Youth Leadership Institute.
Jeff Jackson, a programdevelopment specialist with the county’s Youth Services agency, runs the course and takes delight in pushing teams through the obstacles.
“There’s not a single exercise out here that you can perform successfully on your own,” he said. “You have to work as a team.”
Payne went through the ropes course while participating in the year-long Leadership Institute class that ended in May.
“I found out that I guess I am a pretty good leader,” the Mills High School junior said. “It was a good and positive program that helps build leadership potential. It givespeople a chance to actually step out and see that they have potential, and it can reinforce if you already have leadership values.”
In the Leadership Institute, ninth- and 10th-graders prepare for the workplace and learn life skills with an emphasis on communication, decision making, community involvement, civic responsibility and career exploration. Students are also expected to complete a service project and a fundraising project during the class, which meets one Saturday a month.
Kathleen Velek, a spokesman for Pulaski County Youth Services, said the ropes course was created as part of the county’s Our Club program that targeted youths at risk of falling in with gangs. The program’s advertising slogan was “Our Club. Join the RightKind of Gang!”
The program focused on offering after-school activities.
“It was first constructed to provide leadership training to youths enrolled in the various Our Club sites located in Pulaski County,” she said. “That was when there was a lot of gang activity and our department was called Pulaski County Juvenile Services. We changed our name to Youth Services in 2006 because the word ‘juvenile’ seemed to make people think we only offered services for at-risk teens.”
Velek said that while the county pays the salaries of the 12 Youth Services employees, the programs - all of which are free to the public - are funded through grants andfundraisers such as the ropes course.
“I like to say that we’re the best-kept secret in Pulaski County,” she said.
Payne is happy, too. He recently completed the ACT preparation class and is awaiting the results of the college entrance exam. The program pays for the students to take the test. Details on other programs are available at www.co.pulaski.ar.us. Jackson may be called at (501) 340-6671 to schedule a session on the ropes course.
Jackson smiles broadly when describing some of the course’s challenges, such as a 12-foot wall that a team must get everyone over. The catch is that each person can only help a teammate once, and only two people can be at the top of the wall at any given time helping hoist teammates up.
In another challenge, teammates line up on a balance beam in random order, then Jackson randomly assigns them new positions, for example, alphabetically or by birth date. The catch is, the team has to keep all members on the balance beam while getting everyone in the right spot.
There are also various climbing elements that require tethered teammates to work in tandem to reach heights of 30 feet or more. The finale of the course is a zip line where participants climb to a perch 40 feet up and connect a harness to a cable that allows them to slide downhill at about 20 miles per hour toward another perch about 100 yards away.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 12/26/2009