Mountain Mail
SOCORRO – The Socorro Masonic Lodge has donated $600 to the New Mexico Boys Ranch in Bernardo.
Lodge Secretary, Gary Stendahl, said he and Representative Don Tripp presented the check to Boys Ranch Director Mike Kull at the facility Thursday, Dec. 10.
“Our lodge has tried from time to time to give money and help them out,” Stendahl said. “Money we can raise is matched by the Masonic Charities Foundation.”
“We try to real hard to be a part of the state and the local community, too,” Kull told the Mountain Mail. “Socorro is part of our community. We take the kids down there from time to time. We appreciate that support from Socorro. It means a lot to us.”
He said that Boys Ranch is not supported by the government, and relies on individual donations.
“We learned long ago that government money is very unstable money. You may get funding but that funding could be cut off,” Kull said.” The thing that makes us unique is that we don’t accept any government funding. It is supported totally by private funding.”
“We have people all the time asking us to teach them how we do that,” he said. “Rather than rely on one source of money, you could say we have thousands of sources – people, businesses, and organizations that contribute what they can. They have kept us going for 65 years.”
The ranch receives about 75 percent of its funding through individual donations, and 25 percent from civic organizations and clubs.
He said Boys Ranch provides young men with a complete education through high school, in a constructive and supportive environment.
“Most are really behind in school. We’ve also found that kids who grow up in poverty are afraid of college,” Kull said. “We have some take college courses while still in school, and as kids leave we help them get into college.”
The ranch uses a family-style living approach which helps them learn how to function as family members and develop healthy peer relationships.
“Each boy lives in a cottage with nine other boys and a married couple called Resident Advisors,” Kull said. “We don’t want anyone to replace their real families. The resident advisors are more like coaches, and take care to ensure the boys don’t worry about divided loyalties.”
“One of the biggest problems in a children’s institution like this is older kids doing something inappropriate to younger kids,” he said. “At Boys Ranch, we have a counselor the younger boys can talk to, who can take care of the situation without the older boy knowing who ‘snitched’.”
The typical resident is of junior high or high school age and lives at Boys Ranch about two and a half years, and all boys participate voluntarily.
“We have no gates. No fences. We tell them if they don’t want to come they don’t have to come,” Kull said. “If they want to come, they have to make a commitment to work on their issues.
“They are kids that for some reason cannot be at home, whether it be that their parent have been incarcerated, or there’s an alcohol or drug abuse problem at home,” he said. “A lot come to us through CYFD, which licenses us. They are recommended to us by the courts, parents, grandparents, a teacher, or church. When a child cannot live at home for whatever reason we take that child on a 24 hour basis.
“Our first goal is to get kids back home if we can,” Kull said.
Although a percentage of the alumni need additional counseling through a program in Albuquer-que, or continue on to a co-ed independent-living program at an affiliated ranch in Clovis, Kull said there are many success stories in the facility’s 65 year history.
“We had a young man who came to the ranch at five years old. He went through and graduated from high school, and continued on to college, getting his Bachelor’s degree,” he said. “He became a banker and worked for a national financial institution a number of years. Then came back, and is now president of New Mexico Boys and Girls Ranch Foundation.”
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