Lessons learned with ‘Broken Lives’

Please enjoy today’s production of “Broken Lives” — an ambitious seven-day reporting effort by The Vindicator and Youngstown State University that highlights life inside Youngstown’s remarkable Ohio Valley Teen Challenge.

It’s been an exhaustive effort but one that has yielded some refreshing reminders about life. I hope readers find other reminders as well. Here’s what I’ve taken from this:

Things can be fixed

We’re in a throw-away society — including lives.

“Broken Lives” is about lost men who’ve done just about everything wrong in life — to themselves, their families and their communities. Those around them had every reason to disown them and incarcerate them.

Yet finally, some of the men were reached. That it’s not all of the men means one of two things, depending on your outlook in life:

There are problems to avoid.

There are opportunities to change.

It’s fitting that this “saving” occurs in what was a shuttered hospital in a dilapidated Youngstown neighborhood.

Broken men in a broken facility in a broken neighborhood.

We can run away from such problems temporarily — men or cities. But are we better for it?

It takes work

Greg Todd of East Liverpool is one of the focal points of our series.

He’ll say in his video that will debut Monday that he ran from everything in life that required accountability.

Drugs did not. He ran to them.

At Teen Challenge, when officials were explaining the hefty work component of the program — essentially seven days a week — Todd groaned at the thought. But an official was unwavering.

“We’re men. We work. This is what we have to do in life.”

Todd said it was the first time that message resonated with him. All he did in life was run, he said. Others around him worked. No more.

Not an ‘everything’ package

If you’re impacted by other forms of addiction, this project might not be specific to you.

Addiction is a complex, multifaceted world, said one reader responding to our promotion of this series and hoping that we really got into deeper addiction issues.

We did not — and that was intentional.

This is one place — OVTC.

In being all things to all issues, there’s a risk of never having a deep-enough impact.

We invested in this one slice of addiction hoping that others can grow from this either directly or indirectly.

Building bridges

Seldom are successes individual anymore. The broken men reached out. The leaders of this organization reached out.

Even The Vindicator’s ability to make this project happen was aided by reaching out in a partnership with YSU.

I’ve used the Bill Staines folk song “Bridges” before in this space, and darn if that song was not on my mind again this week.

“Let us span another canyon, let us right another wrong ...”

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes e-mails about stories and our newspaper. E-mail at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on Vindy.com