“You aren’t born with kindness; you have to practice it!”
Those words of wisdom come from 18-year-old Brittany St. Clair, a recent high school graduate and member of the 2016 class of the Ford Dimension, a leadership development program that has inspired and prepared local high school seniors in Bakersfield, CA for more than 40 years.
St. Clair and her team of eight students from around the city spent the school year creating a classroom curriculum called “Kind is the New Cool.” The team introduced the curriculum to school superintendents around the county, working most closely with Reagan Elementary School whose teachers incorporated the lessons into their teaching plan.
Kind is the New Cool was just one of four projects created by the 32 members of this year’s class of Dream Builders and the Ford Dimension, programs created by Bakersfield business and philanthropic icon Jim Burke.
Decades ago, Jim Burke realized the need for business leaders to connect with young people in order to promote volunteerism, community development, and business ethics. Burke himself was an example of highest ethics and commitment to community. He was hired at Haberfelde Ford in Bakersfield as a young man, working there for 16 years in various capacities. In 1964, he purchased the dealership and established Jim Burke Ford, an enterprise that now includes two locations and ranks as one of the largest Ford dealerships in the nation. Burke died in 2006 and the business continues to be family-owned and operated, led by his son-in-law, Dan Hay.
Toward his goal of bringing business and youth together, Burke created The Ford Dimension in 1975, working with a small group of select high school seniors. The Dream Builder program was added in 2003 and today, the two combined programs prepare teen leaders for a lifelong commitment to civic responsibility.
The program is highly competitive and the benefits for those selected are wide-ranging. Their year is filled with guest speakers, field trips, and special events that reveal the inner workings of the community. Students also meet weekly to work on their team projects which are implemented throughout the year and presented at a culminating event with family and friends.
It may sound counterintuitive, but putting eight student leaders together to create a project from the ground up can prove to be challenging.
“Our team did not click the first couple of meetings,” St. Clair said. “Each of us had our own ideas for a project and we all felt strongly about them.” In the end, the group of eight individuals began to coalesce into one true team. “We decided that kindness was the basis for each of our passions,” St. Clair said, adding that they could each put their heart into a project designed to encourage kindness at the elementary school level.
St. Clair’s team created eight months of lessons for use in classrooms today and for years to come. “We weren’t curriculum experts, but we looked at what we liked best about our own teachers and built that into our program. We focused on messages that weren’t in the school’s core curriculum,” she said.
“It has had a real impact on our students,” said Pam Somes, principal of Reagan Elementary. “Plus, I include something from the program in my message to students each morning.”
Other team projects this year focused on skin cancer prevention for children, a cyber-bullying awareness campaign, and a literacy program targeting 2 and 6 grade students.
Jim Burke may be gone, but his legacy lives on. Thanks to the Jim Burke Education Foundation and Burke’s family that continues to lead it, the list of Dream Builders/Ford Dimension alumni continues to grow. Most importantly, each year the program produces a new class of young adults prepared for a life time of service to their community.
Originally written for Bakersfield Life Magazine.