Public service and push-ups. It’s all in an average week for teens in the Naco CBP Border Patrol Station’s Explorer Post 869. They are teens from Cochise County, Ariz., who strive to serve while learning all aspects of the CBP Border Patrol mission.

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Terrence Ford, recognizing a lack of “outreach programming for adolescents in our community,” created Post 869 in April 2004. Drawing on the experience of Supervisory CBP Border Patrol Agent Oscar Valencia, who had fathered the Explorer Program for the Tucson Sector Border Patrol a decade ago, Ford developed the highly successful program. It was the mentorship, dedication and hard work on the part of SBPAs Ford and Valencia that laid the foundation for what today is the Tucson Sector Explorer Program with five active posts.

Explorer Post 869 graduated 17 Explorers from its first training academy in 2005, and four from a second class in 2006. The Post now has 12 active Explorers and is preparing to recruit for a third class in 2007. It’s been in the limelight lately because of its successes in law enforcement Explorer competitions. Though only in its second year, Post 869 is successful and thriving.

I have found three challenges to creating and sustaining a successful Explorer program: recruitment, retention and fundraising. In terms of recruitment and retention, it is essential to attract and retain youths that share, or desire to develop, ethics and goals in keeping with the Explorer program’s policies and guidelines. Developing an appropriate target audience in your recruiting efforts can be tricky. Keeping attendance levels up in the face of family relocations, impending college moves, and teen employment can be problems. The key to overcoming these challenges is to set a firm code of conduct, enforce well-defined ethical guidelines, and foster leadership in every conceivable situation. By doing these things, youths who seek structure and challenge will apply for the program, and the resulting personal growth they experience will be the key to their retention.

Last, fundraising is a continual challenge for every Explorer post, as they are primarily self-funded. Fundraising can be a positive experience for teens if traditional fundraising is mixed with community service. While our Post holds car washes, they also clean trash left behind on public lands by illegal aliens. The former generates community revenues and enthusiastic water fights, while the latter earns federal grant money, preserves the environment and serves the public as a whole.

While Naco Border Patrol Explorer Post 869 has progressed rapidly, we still have many goals to achieve. We look forward to more competitions in varied locales, increased community service, and another class of teens to help grow our family of future leaders. I hope to see an increase in Explorer post numbers across all of CBP. The positive impact of this program affects not only our relationship with the communities we serve and protect, but also helps to shape the leaders of tomorrow.