Jon Sherry, Founder and President
Jon Sherry is the Founder and President of The Camp*aign for American Kids. A Harvard-trained, non-profit executive and clergyman, Jon has over thirty years experience in the field, including youth work, disaster relief, self-help development, and ecumenical ministry. With training in science as well as theology, he is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society for Neuroscience, the Int’l Brain Based Learning Network, and the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. He and his wife, Carol, live in Glen Allen, VA and have 3 children and 5 grandchildren.
Welcome to The Camp*aign for American Kids website! WARNING! What you learn here may radically change the way you think – about YOU. Why are you the way you are? What factors are responsible for the way you feel about yourself – your sense of self-worth, confidence, and being accepted by others?
And how is it that every shattered life … begins as a pure, blameless child?
The Camp*aign for American Kids began as a heartfelt response to people around the country who watched helplessly as the well-being of our nation’s children disintegrated before their eyes. Thus, The Camp*aign began working in earnest to rocket public awareness sky-high about Joey, that is, Joint Outdoor-Ecumenical Youth programs.
Joey is child’s best friend! Studies have shown that Joey kids are simply more likely to become solid, productive and well-adjusted adults. Most importantly, Joey kids are less likely to stumble upon a path leading to a lifetime of despair. This is because Joeys have the capacity to enhance a child’s life immensely … now and for the future!
With this in mind, here is how The Camp*aign began. In the fall of 2002 and my wife and I were living in Fredericksburg, Virginia. This was during the time of the “Beltway Sniper” incident. Two men—one, a teenager—had been randomly shooting and killing bystanders from a moving car from Maryland to Virginia. Two of the victims were killed in Fredericksburg, not far from my house. One was a woman loading the back of her van with arts and crafts materials she had just purchased and the other, a man who stopped to get gasoline on his way north.
No one knew how to stop the killing spree. Eventually the perpetrators were caught, but only by accident; on a wild hunch, a truck driver at a rest stop phoned the police and reported a suspicious vehicle, which didn't fit the “white van” description that everyone had feared for three weeks. That’s how the murderous rampage of the Beltway Snipers finally ended.
Now, Fredericksburg is only 20 miles south of Quantico, Virginia, where the national headquarters of the FBI is located. In fact, several people in my neighborhood worked for the FBI. After the snipers were apprehended, one of the agents told me, “It could have been so much worse. Had the snipers been working in unison with others, not only in the DC area but also Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Atlanta, there is nothing we could have done to stop them.”
Up until the Beltway Sniper, I had worked mostly in the field of disaster relief, primarily helping victims outside of the U.S. But after the Sniper attacks, I began to wonder if perhaps the greatest disaster of all was unfolding right under our noses—not in some far away place; but right here in our own country.
Take school shootings for instance. In the 1960s there were two; the 1970s, four; the 1980s, two. But, beginning with the 1990s, something horrible began roiling the minds and hearts of young people. During that decade school shootings increased to an average of one every year.
In our current decade the rate of school shootings is now at an all time high, with the April 16, 2007 Massacre at Virginia Tech setting a grim record as the deadliest of all, resulting in 32 deaths.
The response to this outbreak of murders was to increase the use of metal detectors. The Camp*aign for American Kids, however, believes that the answer is not to install metal detectors in schools, but to instill core values in school-age children—values such as kindness, generosity, Faith, teamwork and responsibility.
This is the work of The Camp*aign for American Kids. It's ...
a little change … for a WHOLE life!
Please spread our good news among your friends. And, again, welcome to The Camp*aign for American Kids! (To continue, click here or, to help now, click here.)
All good wishes,
Jon Michael Sherry
Founder & President
Jon@ForAmericanKids.org
