{"id":19681,"date":"2018-09-17T14:42:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T18:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=19681"},"modified":"2018-09-17T14:42:31","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T18:42:31","slug":"they-gave-me-back-my-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/they-gave-me-back-my-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"'They gave me back my hope'"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ch<\/span>astyn Webster<\/span> graduated from Clemson in May with a bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology. Along the way, she volunteered with Alternative Spring Break, was a research team member with Aspire to Be Well and Tigers Together to Stop Suicide, and a member of Sigma Kappa. She plans to pursue a master\u2019s degree in social work. <\/span><\/p>\n

Long before her arrival as a freshman, Webster had experienced a different side of Clemson \u2014 one that has served more than 5,000 marginalized youth ranging from students with autism to teenage mothers in foster care to low-level juvenile offenders. She had been part of a program at Clemson\u2019s Youth Learning Institute. YLI creates and delivers programs for youth and families throughout the state.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery kid is at risk, including mine, and every kid deserves a chance,\u201d said Cody Greene, director of at-risk programs at YLI. Greene has spent the past 18 years at YLI, 14 of them as director of the Youth Development Center at Camp Long in Aiken, where Webster was placed by court order at the age of 15. Through team building, experiential learning, life and leadership skills development, and a heavy dose of fun, students are able to envision and achieve different paths for their lives. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe kids who come through our programs are rich, poor, black, white, Hispanic, Asian \u2014 you name it,\u201d Greene said. \u201cThey need positive role models and a safe, nurturing environment, the same as all of us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Carlos Gore is the current director at the YDC, where he\u2019s worked for almost 11 years. \u201cOur students are no different than you and I,\u201d he said. \u201cThey made poor choices due to circumstances that we take for granted.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gore remembers Webster\u2019s early days at Camp Long: \u201cShe felt like everyone was against her. It took her awhile to know the things we were saying would help her.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Webster was at Camp Long for the whole summer, returning home a week before school started. \u201cBeing there was good for me,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I was separated long enough from the people I claimed were my friends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She struggled for the next year, she said. \u201cIt took awhile not to want to return to all those friends I had before, but I decided I wanted more for myself.\u201d Because of her experience at YDC, she set her sights on attending Clemson and studying psychology, with the encouragement of her father.<\/span><\/p>\n

Webster has now returned to Camp Long, this time on staff as a behavior modification specialist for the YDC, working with teenage girls. \u201cI can\u2019t relate to everything because I\u2019ve had privileges that some of them will never have,\u201d Webster said, \u201cbut I know what it\u2019s like to feel hopeless. When I was their age, I thought everyone in the world was against me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hope, she said, is the key. \u201cIt could have been a terrible time in my life, but it wasn\u2019t. It was tough some days for sure, but we had lots of fun times. They allowed me to feel like a kid again \u2014 which I was \u2014 instead of a misfit of society. They gave me back my hope.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn more about the Youth Learning Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long before her arrival as a freshman, Chastyn Webster experienced a different side of Clemson \u2014 one that has served more than 5,000 marginalized youth ranging from students with autism to teenage mothers in foster care to low-level juvenile offenders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":19799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1161,1703],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-these-hills","tag-fall-2018-in-these-hills","tag-juvenile-offenders"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/09\/Chastyn-Webster.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19681"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}