On the evening of Thursday, March 15^th Eliada will host the annual Spring Fling, a formal dinner and dance for students in Eliada’s care.  Made possible through the volunteer support of Western Carolina University students, this event is something Eliada students look forward to all year.

According to Eliada CEO Mark Upright, “Students in non-traditional educational settings often miss out on many of the milestones of adolescence.  Here at Eliada, we want to ensure our students are able to make the same kinds of memories as their peers in the public school environment.  The Spring Fling is a part of that.”

Eliada relies heavily on the community to help make the Spring Fling happen.  Donations of formal wear (especially for young men), jewelry, and decorations are needed.  Anyone interested in making a donation to support the Spring Fling should contact Lindsay Morgan at 828-273-1290 or lmorgan@eliada.org.  Monetary donations can be made online at www.eliada.org.

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Eliada will be hosting an Open House for the Eliada School of Trade Arts on Friday, February 10th and Monday February 13th from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the Paul Amos Recreation Center (PARC) located at 2 Compton Drive in Asheville. This will be an informational session celebrating the upcoming launch of the Eliada School of Trade Arts (ESTA). ESTA is a new vocational and transitional living program for young men with a background in long-term foster care.

At the Open House, Eliada will provide in-depth admission criteria, a timeline of the selection process, and information on the core curriculum. Attendees will be walked through a “Day in the Life” of an ESTA student, and there will be an opportunity for questions. Lastly, Eliada will offer a tour of student housing and classrooms. Lunch will be provided. Participation is open to foster parents, potential students, and anyone who serves at-risk youth. Please RSVP to Kathy Ponte at 828-254-5356 ext 380 or kponte@eliada.org as soon as possible.

For more information on ESTA or to contribute to the project, visit www.eliada.org/programs/esta.

Welcoming its inaugural class of students this summer, ESTA is a post-secondary residential school developed to specifically meet the needs of young men recently transitioning from long-term foster care to adulthood. Through vocational and academic training, character development, a support network, and the experience of transitional living, ESTA will give these young people the tools to become self-sufficient adults and productive members of society.

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Asheville’s Mark Upright is changing the lives of young people as president and CEO of Eliada

Eliada’s Mark Upright believes that no child is beyond hope, regardless of the circumstances

Eliada President and CEO Mark Upright has a law degree, an MBA and two bachelor’s degrees, all in different fields.

He uses his stellar skill set on a daily basis, flitting from pro bono legal work to advocating for foster children to wrangling a high-dollar grant for a new program on the Eliada campus.

“I love learning and would probably still be in school if my wife would let me,” said Upright, who will turn 50 in March. “Every day, I use the skills and knowledge gained from my business and law training, and I think these educational experiences have made me a much more effective leader.

But he also takes time to blow bubbles on the playground with the kids in Eliada’s after-school program and to pay visits to his favorite campus pet, a llama named Larry.

He is smart enough to know that, while degrees are valuable, a lot of letters with dots behind them aren’t the only thing.

“Education provides you knowledge, but experience provides you with something much more valuable, and that is wisdom,” Upright said. “That is my goal now, to become wiser with each passing day.”

There are plenty of opportunities to gain wisdom on the bustling Eliada campus just off Leicester Highway, which was founded 108 years ago by Dr. Lucius B. Compton as a home for women and children, and for decades beyond would be known a place of last resort for orphans.

That role has changed dramatically in recent years, with Eliada now serving some 550-600 children each year with a full continuum of services, among them a five-star child development center, preschool, after-school and summer camp programs, in-home services, residential and day treatment for children and adolescents, foster care and therapeutic foster care, and therapeutic recreational services.

That’s a mouthful of words, but they boil down to mean that Upright is in charge of a dizzying array of not only programs, but real people — many of them at-risk children suffering from mental illness and emotional damage often caused by circumstances beyond their control.

Rather than succumbing to weariness doing work that could feel defeating to someone with a different worldview, Upright is constantly stoked at the prospect of the surprises that will come his way each day.

“Our first purpose is to achieve our mission: helping children succeed,” he said. “But I think we also have a secondary purpose, and that is to prove that miracles really do happen, and they happen all the time.”

So often, he said, the students who come to Eliada “have been discounted by society; they’re viewed as damaged goods or lost causes.”

“Yet I know from my work here that no child is beyond hope, no matter how adverse the circumstances might be, and what have been their greatest challenges can also be opportunities for creating great character,” Upright said.

“When a child discovers the strengths and gifts that they didn’t realize they have, suddenly a new path is revealed to them,” he said. “Miracles are those things that are surprising; a welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws, and is considered to be divine.

“Miracles happen all the time here at Eliada,” Upright said. “You just have to be looking for them.”

A turning point

Raised in farm country outside Philadelphia, Upright was an athlete from a young age, joining the wrestling team, pole vaulting for the track team and weightlifting — an activity he continues today.

“Every morning beginning at 5:30 a.m., you can find me lifting weights at the Reuter Family YMCA,” he said. “I have been lifting since I was 14, and I hope to still be lifting when I’m 80. I try to encourage my own kids as well as the students at Eliada to find a healthy ‘habit’ and make it a routine.”

Upright’s work with and for children began early, when he took a job after high school graduation working as a YMCA camp counselor.

“It was one of the turning points of my life. I was inspired to see inner-city kids transform from nervous, homesick children to confident young adults who were more independent and mature after their camp experience,” he said.

He worked each summer through college at YMCA camp and later was a YMCA ranger hiking most of the Appalachian Trail with a group of teenage summer campers. He remains today a ferocious proponent of summer camp, saying the experience is “one of the most important gifts a parent can give to a child.”

Upright cited Michael Eisner, former CEO of the Walt Disney Co., as saying that everything he needed to know to successfully lead Disney, he learned from being a camper and camp counselor.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Upright said. “The resilience, creativity and ability to work in a team are essential to being a successful adult, and you learn it all at camp.”

Positive change

It was at Y camp that Upright discovered the National Youth Project Using Minibikes program, which gives at-risk youths the chance to ride minibikes as they make positive changes in their lives.

When he came to Eliada in 2002, he worked with the staff and Honda America to bring the program to campus, and it has proved to be “an incredible treatment program for Eliada’s youth.”

Eliada hosted the Southeast Regional NYPUM Rodeo a year ago, and Upright was recently appointed to the national board of directors for the project.

As an international exchange student during his junior year of college, Upright traveled through 15 European countries and was significantly affected by meeting the people of Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany.

Even then gathering wisdom day by day, Upright retained and still uses the lessons he learned overseas.

“The Soviet Union was just beginning to go through dramatic political changes, and the students from those countries had endured such adversity and hardships, yet those students were resilient, optimistic and extremely proud of their countries and heritage,” he said.

“Then and now that experience reminds me that through great adversity, great individual character is achieved,” he said. “Adversity can often be a gift.”

Creative initiatives

Through college, Upright worked as a recreational aide at a national children’s hospital and was a youth advocate in the juvenile justice system. He later worked as a teacher in an alternative school and a social worker in the Philadelphia foster care system.

Armed with a lone bachelor’s degree in psychology and eager to become an administrator, Upright returned to college to earn an accounting degree and went on to earn his MBA and a law degree from Rutgers University.

Before coming to Asheville in 2002, he was a CFO and vice president of administration for two large child welfare agencies in Philadelphia.

When he arrived on Eliada’s campus, Upright hit the ground running, again using some of the wisdom he’d garnered along the way.

One of his initiatives is the Residential Interns Seeking Excellence program, based on a model from his law school days when students were required to do pro bono work serving the poor and indigent.

“When I was doing that work, I learned so much from the attorneys I served under — in fact, this was more valuable to me than the academic coursework,” Upright said.

Today, Eliada’s RISE program allows new college graduates the same kind of experience in the social service sector, working with Eliada for one year, rotating through its various treatment services.

“They receive room, board and a small stipend, in addition to the real-world work experience that, in this economy, is invaluable,” Upright said. “Our students benefit from their energy and enthusiasm, and we are able to staff at a higher ratio than we would otherwise be able to achieve.”

So far, RISE has had interns from nine countries and 32 universities.

His latest initiative is the Eliada School of Trade Arts, which will open this summer as the state’s only post-secondary residential school developed to meet the needs of young men transitioning from long-term foster care to adulthood.

Through vocational and academic training leading to an associate degree, a support network and the experience of transitional living, ESTA will give these young people the tools to become self-sufficient adults and productive members of society, Upright said.

“I am most looking forward to giving these students the chance to discover their potential and seeing the excitement that comes from that,” he said. “I hope they come back in five, 10 or 15 years and are wonderful husbands, fathers and citizens of our community — that is when I will know we have been successful.”

Supporting community

Upright’s work on behalf of youths isn’t restricted to the Eliada campus.

He is a member of the board of Smart Start, a former Volunteer of the Year with Junior Achievement, volunteers with Pisgah Legal Services and has taken on a number of child custody cases in which the parents didn’t have the financial means to retain an attorney to advocate for their child.

Another organization Upright supports by providing space for training and certification is Paws With a Purpose, a therapy program that sends dogs into schools, hospitals and other settings and has brought “joy” to Eliada’s students.

Upright also supports Norman Osteen’s Strong and Courageous Wrestling Club, which meets weekly on campus to foster character development through the sport of wrestling.

Asheville River Arts District leader Jolene Mechanic, who lived at Eliada in the late 1960s and ’70s, has worked happily with Upright on several projects with Eliada’s kids involving filmmaking and arts openings.

“Mark’s willingness to open a path of availability makes it very easy to want to do something at Eliada, where there is such a strong need for the kids to be able to artistically express themselves,” Mechanic said.

“Statistics prove, again and again, how important exposure to art is, how it offers a positive channel for anger management, how it increases self-confidence and how it teaches kids to make good judgments about qualitative relationships,” she said. “Mark apparently has done his homework, because he understands this.”

Tim Kelley, president of the Eliada Foundation board and a member of the search committee that hired Upright, agreed.

“Mark cares about the kids, and he’s very forward-thinking about opportunities to advance them and help them lead successful lives,” Kelley said, citing as an example the new vocational school Upright began envisioning seven years ago.

“We don’t want to just serve kids now, but see how we can help them sustain a livelihood after they leave us,” he said. “And this new endeavor is one way to look at that.”

Cause for pride

Off campus, Upright stays busy with his three sons — Justin, 18, Holden, 13, and Jordan, 12 — and his wife, Donna, a teacher’s assistant at Estes Elementary School, whom he calls “my best friend and most trusted adviser.”

They spend most weekends at sporting events with the boys, who are involved in travel baseball, travel soccer, wrestling, karate and Boy Scouts. The family enjoys hiking and camping, and visits the Outer Banks once each year.

A fan of Sinatra and big band music from the ’40s, Upright confesses to an addiction to the TV shows “Storage Wars” and “American Pickers,” but he gets off the couch to keep mentally and physically fit with his daily weightlifting regime.

He carefully ponders a question asking with whom he would most like to share a long, lingering dinner.

“Without a doubt, I would like to have dinner with Jesus,” he said. “I have a lot of questions, and I would like to know if I’m hitting the mark.”

Others on the list would be Walt Disney, whose company “is in a league of its own in creating the optimal corporate culture,” as well as Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, “both of whom had an extraordinary ability to communicate and inspire others for greatness.”

But at the top of the list, beside Jesus at the dinner table, would be Dr. Compton, Eliada’s founder.

“Every day, I wonder what he would think about the direction that Eliada has taken. … He was such a visionary figure who began Eliada with little more than his personal conviction,” Upright said.

“I am moved at how much he accomplished with so few resources. I wish I could speak with him and get a real sense of who he was,” Upright said. “I want to know what he wanted to accomplish but didn’t or what he was most proud of.”

Upright can be proud of what he himself has accomplished, if the words of Kourtany T., a current foster child and student at Eliada Academy, are an indication.

“Mr. Upright always asks me how I am doing, and he always talks to me about my future plans and ways to help me get there,” Kourtany said. “Mr. Upright asks about what kind of job I want to have and what I want to do in school — I’ve never seen anybody so busy, walking around and looking for ways that we can be better.”

Kourtany said when she first met Upright, “I thought he was really different than he turned out to be. I got to know him and learned that he really has an easygoing spirit, and he is so friendly.

“When I grow up, I want to come back to Eliada and tell Mr. Upright what I have been doing,” she said. “I think he will be really proud of me.”

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Hunter Huffman loves helping children succeed, and he has a unique way of doing it. A lead residential counselor at Eliada and a dedicated volunteer, Huffman has organized a wrestling team of young men who live and are in treatment at the agency. For students who have often experienced violence in their pasts or have oppositional disorders, wrestling might not seem like a natural fit.

“Wrestling is actually a perfect compliment to what we’re trying to instill in these young men,” says Huffman. “It teaches safe ways to express aggression and a high degree of discipline. Attending my wrestling class is an earned privilege, so this experience is motivating for the students.”

Together with Norm Osteen, founder of the Strong & Courageous regional wrestling program, Huffman has organized biweekly practices for the students. Although he has a demanding full-time position at Eliada, Hunter comes on the weekends during his days off to teach the students the fundamentals of wrestling.

“I learned about sportsmanship through wrestling,” says Huffman, “and I think it kept me away from other activities that could have gotten me into trouble. I am glad that our students seem to be so motivated by the same thing that kept me going when I was their age.”

Participating in Huffman’s wrestling classes has been transformative for Eliada’s students, most of whom have had little prior experience in organized sports. For them, Huffman is a teacher, coach, and role model.

Through Coach Osteen, Huffman has been able to network the Eliada wrestlers from others across the region. He has also benefitted from Osteen’s experience and strong track record of success. A former Olympic wrestling coach and head of the Puerto Rico World Wrestling Team, Osteen has coached dozens of state champions from across North Carolina. Recently, Osteen brought his wrestlers to a tournament organized at Eliada. It was the first opportunity Huffman’s students had to test out their skills in a competitive forum.

“They didn’t do that well, but it was their first tournament,” said Huffman. “I think that in many ways, losing can be just as instructive as winning. I tell the students that you don’t lose to your opponent, because wrestling is really about competing against yourself.”

Now, Huffman wants to formalize the team and grow opportunities for future competition.

“I could always use more help,” says Huffman, who adds that the program could use experienced volunteers and/or donations of equipment including shoes, uniforms, knee pads, mouth guards, and more.

Anyone interested in helping should contact 828.254.5356 or email info@eliada.org.

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Eliada CEO Mark Upright envisioned The Eliada School of Trade Arts (ESTA) nearly seven years ago, when a former Eliada student named Brandon showed up in his office one day.

“He was coming back all those years later to ask for help,” said Mr. Upright. “He was a former foster child, very intelligent and outgoing. However, when he became an adult he made some poor decisions and found himself in a desperate situation. He was nearly homeless and had nowhere else to turn.”

Upright was able to help Brandon secure housing and a job as a camp counselor, but he knew that Brandon needed much more than that. The young man’s story continued to trouble him.

“I realized that, as a community, we needed to do more for these young people to prepare them for adulthood. Eliada began offering some independent living classes and things of that nature, but ultimately they weren’t effective. Unfortunately, when these young people most need support is when all support has been pulled away,” Upright says.

Brandon’s situation was not unique. For decades, child and family service providers have been plagued with the dismal outcomes that characterize long-term foster youth. Having spent the majority of their childhood and adolescence in residential or foster home placements, these young people, males in particular, seldom have the skills or support they need to successfully navigate life as independent adults. The statistics are bleak:

• 80% of our current prison population in the US is comprised of former foster children.
• 25% of children leaving foster care are incarcerated within two years.
• 66% of children exiting foster care have not finished high school or obtained a GED by age 19.
• 50% of those within 1.5 years of leaving foster care are unemployed.
• 25% are homeless within four years of leaving care.
• 3% of former foster children complete a college degree.

Upright and his Eliada team began studying what other states and organizations across the country did to address this issue. They found that most existing programs in North Carolina were ad-hoc efforts that focused only on housing or supporting academic achievement, while the most successful national programs seemed to provide a much more intensive, comprehensive approach. Based on this research and years of program development, The Eliada School of Trade Arts (ESTA) was born.

Welcoming its inaugural class of students this summer, ESTA is a post-secondary residential school developed to specifically meet the needs of young men recently transitioning from long-term foster care to adulthood. Through vocational and academic training, character development, a support network, and the experience of transitional living, ESTA will give these young people the tools to become self-sufficient adults and productive members of society.

“The program is ambitious because the need is so overwhelming,” says Upright. “ESTA is like a bridge to adulthood. Students will live on campus, get an associate’s degree in a specified trade right here at Eliada, and also participate in an incredibly powerful character development curriculum. There is nothing else like this in North Carolina.”

The Eliada campus will provide an idyllic setting for ESTA. With over 200 acres, the campus boasts amenities like a newly renovated health & fitness center, gymnasium, driving range, outdoor pool, smart classrooms, computer labs, wilderness trails, and much more.

“ESTA will be a perfect complement to our existing programs for children and adolescents,” said Upright. “In many ways, it truly is the fulfillment of our mission: Helping Children Succeed. The idea behind ESTA is to keep the promise of that mission statement, even after those children become young adults.”

The Duke Endowment has pledged major multiyear support for ESTA, with others including Janirve, The Cannon Foundation, and the Perry Rudnick Endowment also contributing significant gifts. All told, private foundation grants for the project total nearly half a million dollars. This funding will support the program through the initial two-year period during which ESTA will become accredited. After accreditation, the program will be sustainable through Pell Grants and other state or national sources. There will never be a cost to students for attending ESTA.

“Through all of our Child Care grants, we support effective organizations that help vulnerable children lead successful lives,” says Rhett Mabry, vice president of The Duke Endowment. “Teens who age out of foster care face a multitude of complex challenges, and we believe ESTA provides a way to help them better prepare for adulthood. Through this grant, the Endowment is investing in Eliada’s ongoing efforts to expand opportunities for these young people.”

“Foundation support has truly made ESTA possible,” says Upright. “This isn’t exactly the optimal economic climate to launch such a significant new program, but we simply cannot wait when the stakes are so high for these young people. Thanks to The Duke Endowment, Janirve Foundation, Cannon Foundation, the Rudnick Endowment, and others, we don’t have to.”

For more information on ESTA or to contribute to the project, visit www.eliada.org/programs/esta.

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