BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Around the country, more and more churches, schools, scholars, social workers, and others are trying to understand and address the challenges facing so many poor boys and young men, particularly if they are African American. From Indianapolis, Lucky Severson puts names and faces on some of the kids needing help, and on some of the grown-ups giving it.

LUCKY SEVERSON: This may not be what it seems. It's not a class about how not to do pushups, although many of these kids seem to spend most of their time wrestling the floor. This is a wrestling class, but it's more about values and discipline -- hence the pushups -- and about teaching young boys like Navawn that they are not a mistake and that they matter.

NAVAWN KIMURA: I can't do a pushup, I swear!

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I expect more from you than anybody else. Let's go. I don't want you to … Now, one. Now, two.

SEVERSON (to Navawn): Do you think coming here helps you stay out of trouble?

NAVAWN: Uh-huh.

SEVERSON (to Unidentified Boy #1): Brothers and sisters?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: I've got two sisters and two brothers.

SEVERSON: Are they all in school?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: Um hmm, but one is locked up.

SEVERSON: One locked up? What for?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: Drugs.

SEVERSON (to Unidentified Boy #2): Do you know a lot of kids who have brothers in jail?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #2: Yeah.

SEVERSON: A lot?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #2: Yep.

SEVERSON: This is the Jireh Sports Center, a faith-based and church-sponsored program located in one of the worst neighborhoods in Indianapolis. Tim Streett, the minister who runs Jireh Sports, says these kids live in a society that doesn't value them.

Reverend TIM STREETT (Executive Director, Jireh Sports): Because they're black, or they're poor, or they live on the wrong side of the tracks. We believe that the only way to get them to truly value themselves is, one, to have a sense of accomplishment; and two, to have a relationship with God, to believe that they were not a mistake, that they were created by a loving God who cares about them.

SEVERSON: The odds of succeeding for boys growing up in this part of town are pretty slim compared to other Indianapolis neighborhoods. The same is true most anywhere in the U.S. But it's also true that boys from both poor and rich neighborhoods are having a hard time of it. They're falling behind girls in some serious ways, and they need some help.

Listen to Bill Stanczykiewicz, president of the Indiana Youth Institute.

BILL STANCZYKIEWICZ (President, Indiana Youth Institute): There are a couple of studies out there, one by a group called the Manhattan Institute that found that dysfunctional behavior amongst kids, especially boys, is just the same for middle- and upper-income kids as it is for low-income kids. And there was a recent article in FORBES magazine that looked at the CEOs who do a great job of leading their companies. What the story in their family? Their kids are having all sorts of dysfunctional problems, especially the boys. Why? Most often because Dad is not around.

SEVERSON: Girls suffer, too, but recent statistics show they're more likely to withstand the tribulations of childhood. For every 100 girls who graduate from high school, only 96 boys graduate. For every 100 girls diagnosed with emotional disturbance, over three times that many boys receive the same diagnosis. For every 100 girls who graduate from college, only 73 boys graduate. And the list goes on.

Rev. STREETT: Yeah, boys are falling behind, and they're falling behind across the board.

SEVERSON: Streett knows what can happen when kids grow up wrong. He was 15 when his father was shot to death.

Rev. STREETT: He and I were shoveling snow in our driveway one night when we were held up at gunpoint, and my father was murdered by three young men, young men much like the young men growing up in this neighborhood. As a matter of fact, one of them grew up not too far from here.

SEVERSON: He says the Lord took him through a 20-year process that led him to forgive his father's killers and led him here.

Rev. STREETT: And I really feel like God used my father's death to put his stamp upon my life about where I -- what type of ministry I would end up in.

SEVERSON: Thirteen-year-old Navawn Kimura should, by now, be the best pushup-er in Indiana.

(to Navawn): Brothers and sisters?

NAVAWN: I got two brothers and two sisters.

SEVERSON: Nobody in trouble?

NAVAWN: Un-uh. Except for me.

SEVERSON: How are you in trouble?

NAVAWN: I got suspended from school today. And this is my neighbor's house.

SEVERSON: Navawn was suspended, he says, for getting in a fight with a bully. He agreed to spend part of his involuntary day off with us roaming his neighborhood, which apparently takes on a different character at night.

(to Navawn): I mean, it doesn't look like a bad neighborhood; it doesn't look like a neighborhood that would have gangs or drugs or anything like that.

NAVAWN: Yeah, some of it does.

SEVERSON: Navawn's mom was at work. She has two jobs -- drives a school bus and does nails. He knows little about his father.