Youth Re:Action Corps Executive Director, Courtney Klein, is highlighted on the front page of the Catholic Sun.  The Article is reprinted below.

The Catholic Sun

Claudia I. Provencio

December 15, 2005

At age 22, Courtney Klein boasts two executive director titles on her résumé and owns her own business — minor accomplishments compared to what the recent Arizona State University graduate hopes to accomplish globally.

Although the 5’7” brunette’s non-profit Youth Re:Action Corps, a program modeled after the Peace Corps, is only three months old, it is already gaining national support and piquing the interest of international organizations like the United Nations.

Launched with $1,000 in seed money from the Edson Initiative, a university program that awards grant money to student entrepreneurs, Klein hopes the nonprofit will empower high school students to enact social change on a local and global scale.

“You have the Peace Corps for graduating college students and you have AmeriCorps for college-age students. What is there for young people?” she said of the programs that foster a commitment to serving international and national communities. “Why are we only picking up community service initiatives after college?”

Determined to provide a solution, Klein set her sights on creating a youth service organization embedded in high schools that “breathes and teaches” social entrepreneurship to young people.

A heart for service

Klein’s passion for helping others developed as a child. At age 6, she volunteered with a Mesa program that provides airplane rides for developmentally and physically challenged children. Later, in junior high school she co-founded Teen Trendsetters, a community-based program that encouraged her peers to engage in small, internationally based projects like building and painting toy trucks for Christmas for an orphanage in Russia.

During another Christmas, while ringing the donation bell for the Salvation Army, Klein and younger sister Jaimie decided people should get something in return for their thoughtfulness. “So they took their change purses and bought candy canes to give back to those who contributed so willingly during the holidays,” said Klein’s mother Pam.

As a teenager and college student, Klein’s volunteer efforts focused on Save the Family, a nonprofit that provides transitional housing, case management and support services to homeless families with children. “I really think it is a God-given passion,” Klein said of her volunteerism.

During her sophomore year at ASU, Klein traveled to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with the college-age group at St. Timothy Parish in Mesa for a two-week mission trip that involved re-roofing villagers’ homes with palm branches.

“We lived in a hut and slept on a hammock. We burned our toilet paper,” she said of the group’s living conditions. “We showered in the rain sometimes because it was warmer than the minimal shower water we had and certainly a longer shower than we’d get otherwise. It was so rudimentary but I have never been so at peace with everything around me. Ever.”

“We did so much with what we thought was nothing but it was everything because of the intuitiveness that we could do something to make a difference. That’s all we needed.”

Without a TV, a car and other modern conveniences, Klein returned to the states with a heavy heart. “I was literally sick because of everything I had and didn’t need,” she said. “You don’t need any of that to be happy or to create change in the world. Maybe that’s why on a $1,000 I tried to create this crazy thing.”

The vision

Her experience in the Yucatan’s rural villages and a phone conversation with a friend sparked the then-broadcast journalism major to shift her career in a completely different direction.

The experience showed her the need and her friend showed her the way by encouraging her to start a nonprofit that fulfilled her desire to effect change. “I came back to ASU and changed my major within a week and a half,” said Klein, who graduated with a bachelor’s in both nonprofit leadership and management, and communications.

At 18 — the same year she was named Catholic Woman of the Year by the Phoenix Diocesan Council of Catholic Women — Klein’s vision took shape and she began utilizing her contacts in the non-profit sector to build a business plan and establish her 501c3 status.

Three years later, in February 2005 her idea for Youth Re:Action Corps was funded by the Edson Initiative, which in addition to financial support, provides office space and mentorship.

“Two things are very striking to me. First, the depth of her commitment to both helping others and to finding effective ways to make sure her generation understands the importance, and has ways of working together to help others,” said Klein’s mentor Lattie Coor, chairman and CEO of the Center for the Future of Arizona.

“She has a passion and a focus and a drive unlike I have seen in any student  I’ve worked with and I taught my first college class over 50 years ago,” added Coor, who also teaches public affairs at ASU.

Coor said is particularly impressed that outside of the 45-60 hours a week Klein devotes to Youth Re:Action Corps, she finds time to run a for-profit business that provides cleaning services for transitional housing units of Save the Family.  In addition, she also works as executive director of Books for a Better World, a nonprofit organization that empowers and motivates children in developing countries to read.

“She is remarkably well-organized, poised and effectively able to present her case and have a clear understanding of what has to go into creating the idea and the project,” Coor said.

For the past several months Klein has focused on building her organizational capacity and received more than $70,000 in in-kind donations for legal services, accounting, graphic design and Web site development.

Last month, she launched Youth Re:Action Corps pilot programs at three Mesa Public School campuses comprised of five corps teams. Offered as an extracurricular activity, Klein hopes the program empowers teens to resolve societal issues.

“We place it in their hands to do something about what they see as problems. They then develop an annual corps project and they plan, budget, timeline and assign roles, very much like a social service organization,” said Klein, winner of a 2005 Hon Kachina Award for volunteerism.

“They pitch that project to us as an organization and we and the community invest in their ideas and they go back and implement their project plans in their community,” she added. By doing so, Klein hopes to spread a sense of social entrepreneurship to every student her program touches.

As early as next year, Klein hopes to launch an online forum where American students can communicate with students throughout the world — a move that would pave the way for students to collaborate on global issues. In five years, she hopes to have her curriculum in elementary schools.

“Courtney’s not one for failure,” said Pam Klein of her daughter. “She’s very strong-willed, very driven and a disciplined go-getter type and I think that’s going to make her really succeed.” While initially skeptical of her daughter’s desire to forego a high-paying career, her mother admits she was wrong.

“Courtney truly believes that making a change in improving peoples lives in the world is far more fulfilling than a ‘fat’ paycheck,” she said. “I admire that in a young person and I am hoping this feeling will be contagious in other young people, as well.”