At-Risk Girls Find New Direction With Coaching

Caryl Lucas has been a news reporter and worked with designers and celebrities as a fashion commentator. But she discovered her life’s mission helping at-risk girls find new direction through workshops and coaching.

The author, coach and motivational speaker works with girls as young as 12,  in schools, churches and correctional facilities to help them “break out of stereotypes, recognize personal goals, and make choices to build their futures.” Most of the girls are from single-parent homes in urban or suburban New Jersey communities.

Lucas’ message? “If you can believe it, you can be it – but you need an action plan.”

After almost a decade of working with groups, Lucas branched into one-to-one coaching about three years ago, following an encounter during a self-esteem workshop.

One of the young participants described seeing her father on a Newark street. The man walked by without acknowledging her. As the sobbing girl told her story, she threw her arms around Lucas and asked for help.  “I realized then that I had to set up time for individual sessions, to help girls like this in dealing with their anger and coping with abandonment.”

Gilda Rogers, program director of the School-based Youth Services Program at Red Bank Regional High School in Little Silver, N.J., has brought Lucas into the school several times. Part of the message to the students is that each of their lives is of value. “They’re hearing something they haven’t heard, they’re encouraged in a way they haven’t been encouraged,” Rogers says.

“Caryl tries to make them look inward, asks them pointed questions about the future, about their dreams.”

Lucas provides reading lists, recommends classes, helps the girls develop time management skills, and gives assignments including journaling and practicing “articulating what they want and don’t want for their lives.”

Among the most important lessons, Lucas says, is, “It’s ok if something doesn’t work out. It’s not the end of the world. You have to make the effort to keep growing.”

Her media and fashion background impresses the girls and “goes a long way” in boosting Lucas’ credibility with them, Rogers says.

Leslie Morris, director of Community Relations for New Jersey Primary Care Associates in Hamilton, N.J., calls Lucas a friend and colleague as well as an inspiration. “I’ve learned a lot from Caryl,” she says. “She gets people to look at themselves and make changes in their lives.”

Morris has hired Lucas to work with middle and high school students, and plans to bring her into a correctional facility for teen girls. “Caryl is going to talk to them about changes they can make in their lives, in their thinking, to prepare them for life after prison.”

The girls Lucas works with “are struggling with issues and exhibiting behaviors, but they don’t know where the problems come from,” Morris says. “Caryl helps them connect the dots. She gets them to see they can make different choices for themselves and make something productive of their lives.”

Lucas is in the process of starting a teleconference program for small groups, which she’ll use to supplement the coaching. She’s also working with adult women more often. “Women are constantly reinventing themselves,” Lucas says. “They’re thrust into change throughout their lives.”

But regardless of their age, Lucas strives to help her clients build tools that will “turn setbacks into nutrients” that enrich their lives and lead to personal fulfillment.