'HATS OFF' TO Patrick O'Brien Rolleston Jr.

Today's "The Good Stuff" award goes to Patrick O'Brien Rolleston Jr. and Urban Young Life.

Rolleston with students after muddy game of Tug-of-War

(CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.) - I met someone I can’t wait to tell you about. I hope you meet him one day too because his eyes are so kind and blue, words don't do them justice. His voice has a hint of his Appalachian roots.

His sandy hair and beard must be from the Patrick O'Brien side, but the Rolleston in him makes you feel as if he could wrap you up in a warm bear hug. The fine lines on his face leave a trace of his young adulthood which he openly tells you was full of “drugs and turmoil.”

Or maybe the lines represent Pat’s working his way through Covenant College as student in his late 20's, or maybe they represent his last seventeen years of love and service to the kids and families of the inner city. Perhaps the lines are all connected: the lines of his past making him real and approachable for his service in the present.

You see, this Appalachian of Irish descent has been nurturing children, teens, and families in the inner city for nearly two decades. For over seventeen years, Patrick O'Brian Rolleston Jr. has gone where some said he couldn't or shouldn't.

He has helped when others said it would not work. He walks and serves the very streets which have been the scenes of lethal violence. Pat makes a difference because he comes to serve, not to judge, condemn or pity. Pat makes a difference because he loves his kids, he cares, and he has shown up faithfully year after year after year.

Pat is the director of an Urban Young Life chapter in East Tennessee. He meets with his middle and high school Young Life students on a weekly basis. In addition to weekly group meetings, the kids also break up and meet in smaller accountability groups.

Throughout the year, the groups work to earn money to go to a week-long summer camp. For many students, this summer camp experience marks their first time to leave their neighborhood, let alone the state. These camps are an important part of kids seeing a world beyond their neighborhood walls, of getting a glimpse of the life they aspire to live.

Pat's Young Life groups are very relationship driven, and he believes that is why he sees such good results. When you hear him talk, you know there is hope even though in some ways life in the inner city is harder than ever.

Pat will tell you that most of the kids he knows want an education, a family, and to grow up in a safe place.

He says the one percent bent toward civic disobedience make it hard for the rest, but that they are a very noisy minority. Pat reports that he “sees progress” and he is now working to train more and more leaders.

I asked Pat, with such great results, “why just two groups of fifty students?” “Why not more?” For this Urban Young Life, it all boils down to resources.

Pat and a few of his other team members pick up the kids each week in their neighborhoods. They pick up fifty kids because that is how many kids will fit in the vans. Their growth is limited only by the dollars they have to fund their work, and the hands they have to help. In a down economy those funding dollars are tight, but their spirits are not dampened.

Because Urban Young Life is a faith-based initiative, they aren’t eligible to receive government funds or even the majority of most non-profit grants, but they continue to persevere because they continue to see a difference in the lives of young people and their families.

Pat told us about one woman in the neighborhood that he has known for all his seventeen years with Young Life. Her children and grandchildren walked through Young Life with Pat. After the youngest of her children graduated, she sent Pat a very heart-felt note and enclosed $80 to help support the work Pat was doing in her neighborhood.

Even now, Pat gets tears in his eyes as he tells this story. This grandmother’s $80 gift will not be forgotten, and it has made a larger difference than that grandmother could ever know. Her gift represents that hope is alive, vested, and taking root.

This funding issue is frustrating when you consider all the institutional dollars that go to waste trying to make a difference with a new program or new plan. But, is it really all that much of a surprise? Will a government bureaucracy, or a non-profit grant, or a political think tank ever be able to the place of an individual loving another individual? Institutions can try all they want, make all the new programs they want, but at the end of the day, it takes one person caring for and loving another to make a difference.

Real change can come in volumes with a very simple plan: people getting involved and loving other people. That is why Pat and his Young Life kids work. Pat knows his kids accept and love him with all his thistle and thorns — and Pat's kids know that Pat accepts and loves them with all of theirs. There is mutual acceptance and mutual concern, which connects real people in a real way in order to create lasting change.

Today's "The Good Stuff" award goes to Patrick O'Brien Rolleston Jr. If you want to find out more information about Urban Young Life or sponsor one of Pat’s kids to go to camp this summer, the info is posted on The Good Stuff blog at CoCoMcCain.com.

CoCo McCain grew up in central Florida and attended the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering.

CoCo graduated from the Cumberland School of Law in 1998. In addition to her role as an attorney and writer, CoCo works with a translator so that her articles can also be enjoyed by a Spanish speaking audience.

CoCo presently resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband and a roost of beautiful children. She says she is your ordinary girl-next-door … but on that one November day in 2009, CoCo was given an extraordinary dream: "A dream to shine a light on all the good things that happen every single day! Everyday acts of love, bravery and generosity. Everyday acts of determination, kindness and triumph in the face of tragedy. The simple things that make life so rich and rewarding! The zest and marrow of life."

She says from the very beginning, the vision for her column The Good Stuff has been crystal clear: shine a bright light on the good in life because sharing the good has the power to touch lives around the world.

You can write to CoCo McCain at this address: CoCo@CoCoMcCain.com