This past week, we were reminded that youth gun violence is not just a big city problem, when two young teens were charged with shooting and killing a Lancaster city man. Ironically, our Club members were already scheduled to learn this week about a significant effort to help prevent this problem. Our speaker, Will Kiefer, is founder of Bench Mark, a gym-based mentoring program for Lancaster youth. He  will be 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, Will came to believe that you needed to earn their trust and could achieve that through a common bond. Enter weightlifting.

Bench Mark started offering free personal training services to youth identified as “at-risk” by local high schools and community organizations. It wasn’t long before these youth  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 Bench Mark established a strong foundation through weightlifting first, their students responded positively to their mentorship.

Word spread quickly, and the Bench Mark Program 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 Kiefer 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. A college professor connected him with a community leader who introduced him to 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 Will would offer suggestions about how to overcome challenges that pop up in high school. That was the beginning of Bench Mark Program.

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.

Links for the next program:

Notes from last week's program on Elizabethtown's High Center: