[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We are honored to be joined by William Crockett, who's Director of Youth Programs at Joint Base.

That's JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

William, good to have you with us.

- Pleasure's all mine, Steve.

- Explain 'cause there's a lot going on in that title.

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

Explain all that.

Not Linhurst, Lakehurst.

- So pretty much that consists of, it starts out us being part of the 87th Force Support Squadron here at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

And then what we have, it breaks down into a flight, which we call Child and Youth programs flight.

And then within that flight, we have youth programs for McGuire, Dix, and Lakehurst.

- That's Lakehurst, New Jersey.

- Yes.

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey.

- So we're gonna put up the website right now.

The mission of your organization is?

- Our mission is to provide quality, affordable youth programs for the youth and the families of the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst community and ensuring that our military, DOD, and civilian contractors can have their youth in our care and have no worries of them being a part of a safe, fun environment while they try and complete their mission.

- William, talk about your military experience with the Air Force and also how it currently connects to your passion for the work you're doing right now, please.

- Yes.

I started out as serving in the United States Army and I did four years in the Army as an NCO.

And then after my military.

- NCO is non-commissioned officer.

- Non-commissioned officer.

Yes.

So after my time served as active duty member, I joined the Department of Defense as a government civilian employee, started working in child and youth programs.

- Speaking about youth.

In 1995, the Boys and Girls Club became a partner of your organization, a partner to do what?

- So pretty much it became a partnership where that we both had the same common goals and what the military was looking at was trying to bring some consistency and continuity and utilizing the various programs that the Boys and Girls Club had to offer.

So we pretty much married up to the programming aspects of things and it became very beneficial for us because we wanted, there was a couple things that came into play there.

We wanted our youth to be able to have a consistency when they traveled from one installation to the other installation when it came, programs that was available and being offered.

And that was the way for us to branch that model toward that.

If you was at Ramstein, Germany and you PCS to McGuire Youth.

- There's a lot of military jargon and acronyms.

If you what?

- Oh, so that's called a permanent change of a station.

So if you relocated from one military installation to another installation, we wanted to have a consistency of the type of programs that was available.

- You understand the mental health issues that young people face who are in military families.

Help us understand this.

So there are young people across the state and in the nation are facing a whole range of mental health challenges, but what do you think is particularly unique, different, or more challenging for a young person in a military family?

- A lot of things come into play there, Steve.

You know, after coming off of being part of this post pandemic, that affected a lot of our military youth in a certain way because everything was shut down and that was something that they had not gone through before.

On top of that, and coupled with that is also that a lot of our military youth go through the transition of having one parent or both parents go on deployments in the certain missions overseas to various nations and everything.

So sometimes it might be just one parent available, other times it might be a grandma or grandpa who's coming in and filling in while the parents are away.

So again, it's about trying to keep their lives as stable as possible and being able to keep their minds off of what's going on and being able them for them to interact and engage in the various programs we have to offer to soothe that situation that they're going through.

- Talk about a couple of those programs, William.

Be specific about what service or services are offered to those young people as well as their family members.

Military family members, please.

- Well, we have a slew of different programs that we offer from everything, from on the youth, from the youth aspect of it.

And pretty much for some of the families when it comes to what we have what we call our school age program, which is a program that offers care to assist our youth from them being able to be dropped off in the morning, having a good lunch, or I'm sorry, breakfast prior to going to school.

Sometime the parents don't have time to do because they're trying to get to work themselves or they're not here to provide that for them.

And we have a program that gets them on the bus to get 'em to school and then when they come back to us after school, we're there with snacks and assistance with schoolwork and things of that nature to help them get through their days.

And also just offering them quality programming where there's not so much structure to just the education aspects of being, coming in, you know, second part of school.

But for them to be able to participate in programs, the arts, life skills, leadership, the service, helping them develop life skills as well.

- Hey, William, how much of this is personal for you?

- It is very personal because I'm very passionate about it.

I've been involved with this for almost over 30 years.

So it's something that, you know, we have situations where we have youth who started out in our program as pre-teens, what we call, which is 9 to 12 year olds.

And now they're on staff and getting, paying back and doing the same thing for youth.

That was done for them when they was going through the programs that we offer.

- Where's the funding come from?

- Funding come from various aspects.

We have, you know, we fall under the Department of Defense, so we have certain funding that comes straight from the Pentagon to our program to all the installations.

And then when it comes to the east installation, in our case, like we have 87th Force Support Squadron, we have programs that generate revenue, that help offset and pay our staff, and for us to provide programming as well.

And we also get grants from our partnership affiliation with Boys and Girls Club of America.

And sometime in getting assistance in funding.

- William Crockett, director of Youth Programs at Joint Base.

That's JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

William, I was remiss, not in just thanking you for joining us, but thanking you for your service.

And let me add onto that.

The work that you've been doing for three decades plus helping military families, military youth deal with real challenging mental health challenges and issues that those of us who have never been connected to the military will never understand.

William, thank you so much.

We appreciate it.

- You're very welcome.

Thank you for having me.

- You got it, stay with us.

We'll be right back.

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