Home > Mark Douglas Recognized as Dignity and Respect Champion for His Work with Disadvantaged Youth

Mark Douglas Recognized as Dignity and Respect Champion for His Work with Disadvantaged Youth

Center Director of Pittsburgh Job Corps Dedicates His Life to Helping Others

(PITTSBURGH, PA) December 27, 2010 –As a foster parent to teenagers for eight years, Mark Douglas is proud to say helping disadvantaged youth has been his entire career.

“I always had a very basic philosophy since I started in this profession: everyone deserves to be treated with value and respect regardless of their beliefs, orientation, age, or ethnicity. You deserve it because you are a human being,” Douglas said.

Nominated by Dottie Sweeney, Douglas has been chosen as the December Dignity and Respect Champion for his work at the Pittsburgh Job Corps Center in helping the disadvantaged population and encouraging dignity and respect to his staff.

“Every day he exhibits dignity and respect in his interactions with the trainees and staff. He empowers his trainees to make good choices for their lives. Mark daily exemplifies the core values of individual accountability, safety, growth, commitment, integrity, and respect,” Sweeney says.

Originally from Oklahoma City, Mark moved to Forest Hills with his wife in 2008. As center director, Mark is responsible for all training and academic programs, and supervision of daily center operations, with 232 staff members, whose belief is that everyone should feel valuable. With 850 students, Pittsburgh has the largest college program in Job Corps.

“The kids we serve aren’t here because they have succeeded in everything. They are here because of whatever circumstance, whether its abuse, socioeconomic problems, their parents are in trouble, or any other disadvantage. It’s important to me that every student is treated respectfully and with value.”

Mark and his staff practice positive reinforcement, and rewards the students for their accomplishments.

“We reward students for small accomplishments because we want to help them experience what success feels like. We try to help them accomplish something that we can reward them. Our goal is to help them continue to stay on track.”

Mark was honored, excited, and humbled about winning the award, and believes that if everyone treated each other with dignity and respect, it would massively change the community.

“Dignity and respect changes everything -- a family, an organization, a business. Look at the world today and you can see violence and degradation. If people take the approach in life that they don’t have to agree with others about anything or everything, but they do have the responsibility to treat others with respect and value, we would eliminate a lot of the bad news today,” he said.

The Dignity & Respect Campaign is an awareness campaign designed to join individuals, community leaders, community organizations, educational institutions, businesses, and corporations under the common notion that everyone deserves dignity and respect.

Pittsburgh Urban Media

Pittsburgh Urban Media

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