Hometown Boy Makes Good

On March 8, Caccamo escorted 25 children from an inner-city youth football league to the White House. President Barack Obama was honoring the University of Alabama Crimson Tide for winning the national college championship and he thought allowing inner-city kids to meet successful college athletes would prove inspirational. Paul Caccamo has traveled to faraway places and no longer lives in Garden City, but in his heart it will always be what he refers to as his “home base.”

“It was a pretty lucky place to have a childhood,” he reminisced during a recent telephone interview.

His parents, who have resided in the village for 43 years, raised seven sons in what he happily describes as a stable, safe and secure environment. During his years at Garden City High School, one of Caccamo’s goals was to bring students from every clique together, whether it was to attend a fundraiser to raise money and awareness for a particular cause, or to simply hang out in his large backyard for one his parties, which he recalls with a laugh became quite well-known.

Caccamo and his brothers were encouraged to explore the world. As he prepared to graduate from Garden City High School in 1983, he began taking the train to Manhattan. “It’s all about gaining life experience,” he said. “The more people you see, the more you realize how lucky you are.”

Four years later, after Caccamo graduated from Georgetown University’s Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, he extended his reach even further by joining Jesuit Volunteers International to teach on Ebeye in the Marshall Islands, which “National Geographic” described at the time as the “slum of the Pacific.” The 22-year-old witnessed tremendous poverty as people living in shacks clamored for Spam and other canned government food.

He also spent time teaching in China and was present for the Tiananmen Square protest in April of 1989. During his journey back to the United States, these experiences led to personal introspection. “How do we solve the challenges facing students in our own country?” he wondered.

Students abroad lacked the proper books and school supplies. Back in the U.S., Caccamo observed that students were in most cases being provided with the resources, but were lacking the inspiration to utilize them to their fullest. Something was seriously wrong with public education in this country.

In 1994, having just received his master’s degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Caccamo watched a public school teacher coach a group of girls on a soccer field in an impoverished section of Washington, D.C. That’s when he saw how he could become part of the solution. He learned that the team was formed as a way to keep the young women focused and motivated-and in school, off the streets. The team provided them with a sense of belonging, higher self-esteem, more positive peer interactions, motivation to exercise and be healthy, and a stronger school attachment.

“I realized that maybe the best way to have kids pick up a pen is to first have them pick up a ball,” he said.

Caccamo expanded upon this model and formed America SCORES. According to their Web site, the goal is “to empower students in urban communities using soccer, writing, creative expression and service-learning. With teamwork as the unifying value, we inspire youth to lead healthy lifestyles, be engaged students, and become agents of change in their communities.” It has helped more than 30,000 youth in urban public school districts serving 14 cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

Drawing on the program’s success of using sports to address critical issues facing today’s youth, in 2008 Caccamo formed Up2Us, a national coalition of sports-based youth development (SBYD) organizations. The coalition has four goals: to define and increase the quality of programs so that they achieve youth development outcomes; to involve more kids in SBYD programs, especially in underserved communities; to educate the public about the value of SBYD programs; and to engage more people to volunteer and work in SBYD programs.

Up2Us’ flagship program is Coach Across America (CAA), which has been made possible thanks to support from the federal AmeriCorps program, Nike and several smaller foundations. CAA is the first nationwide effort to mobilize highly trained AmeriCorps members as SBYD experts and coaches, to serve, teach and support under-resourced youth and the youth development organizations that provide programming in these communities. Coaches are given a stipend, and if they serve one year, receive a tuition award of up to $7,000 to put toward their student loans.

CAA member activities combat childhood obesity through vigorous physical activity, play and nutrition education; discourage participation in anti-social activities by providing meaningful and attractive alternatives; and encourage youth to stay in school by bolstering self-image, esteem and character through mentoring and participation in intentional sports programming. By the end of this year, Coach Across America plans to have 113 coaches at 31 programs in 12 states. Caccamo says he won’t stop, however, until his program has the resources to deploy thousands of coaches to low-income communities across the country to “inspire every child to succeed on the field... and in life.”

For more information, e-mail Caccamo at pcaccamo@up2us.org or visit www.up2us.org.