Preventing Youth Gun Violence

Introduced by Don Schaller

Preventing Youth Gun Violence

Willem (Will) C. Kiefer

Executive Director and Founder | Bench Mark Program

He will  accompanied by Ayanda McGill, MSW, Director of Intervention Programs, and Kevin McKeither, Predisposition Program Mentor.

Bench Mark Program was founded in 2014 to transform the way we serve our community’s most vulnerable, yet promising population: underserved youth. At that time, many young adults simply were not responding to traditional therapy, prevention programs, or even probation. To maximize their potential, we knew we needed to earn their trust through a common bond. Enter weightlifting.

They started offering free personal training services to youth identified as “at-risk” by local high schools and community organizations. It wasn’t long before they learned that the gym was more than a place for physical exercise. It was a safe, positive space to teach hard work, goal setting, and grit. And because they established a strong foundation through weightlifting first, our students responded positively to our mentorship.

Word spread quickly, and the Bench Mark Program family grew. From 4 to 30 to 150. The gym became their home away from home, a place where they found consistent, enduring support from mentors who treated them like adults. As the numbers of students grew, so too did the breadth of services. And student leadership development--a path for students to eventually become mentors themselves--became the overarching goal.

Fast forward all these years, and while the gym, the team, and the scope of impact have all expanded, the core of the organization remains the same: build the underserved youth into community leaders.

Will was born and raised in Gettysburg, PA before he moved to Lancaster in 2010 to attend Franklin and Marshall College where He studied both Public Health and Spanish. In order to give back to the community before graduating, He decided to mentor a few local high school students at the YMCA. He loved weight lifting, and he loved talking to people, so a fitness-based mentoring program seemed like a natural fit for me. He reached out to a college professor who connected me with a community leader who eventually put me in touch with three young men who he would pick up from school a few days a week and train for a few hours in the gym. They would talk about life and he would offer suggestions about how to overcome all of the challenges that pop up when you’re in high school. That was the beginning of Bench Mark Program as it is today, an organization that has brought me more joy, and more challenges, than he ever could have imagined. When he is not working with his team at Bench Mark Program, he is renovating properties in Lancaster City with his wife Karla, or out walking their dog Snoopy and listening to audiobooks.

Ayanda McGill has been working in the health and human services field since
graduating from Lock Haven University in 2019. In 2021, she secured her Masters in Social
Work from Millersville University. She is a Lancaster City native and brings a deep
understanding of our community to her leadership role at Bench Mark Program. As a Case
Manager, she developed Bench Mark’s first Predisposition Program, the only program in
Lancaster County to serve youth from the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center with
gun-crime charges. She successfully designed the program, hired and trained staff, and
implemented the program that is now a core component to Bench Mark’s Wrap Around
Service Model. Today, as Director of Intervention Programs, Ayanda supervises all
programming at Bench Mark that serves students who have committed a juvenile crime. In
Ayanda’s free time, she serves as the McCaskey High School Girls Basketball Coach.