I didn’t start dancing until I was eighteen-years-old. Then I trained for two-and-a-half years in ballet, went to Julliard and graduated in 2000. The odds were not stacked in my favor in the sense that when I was auditioning, people had been dancing for 10-12 years, and I’m not exactly built for ballet. It was a lot of hard work in a short amount of time.

When I would come home, I would see certain young people kind of hanging out and not being productive. There were other kids who were not getting in trouble, but were bored – the ones in the middle, the kids who were “too bad to be good but too good to be bad”. I felt I wasn’t part of the solution, but part of the problem. So, I prayed on it, did a lot of soul searching, and decided to move back (to Carlisle from NYC). There were other great organizations doing things with kids, but there wasn’t anything like what I had in mind. There were kids who had potential, especially when you’d see them dancing in the street, they just needed to be trained and to have some direction.

So I came back and started REACH! thirteen years ago, back in 2005. At one point, it grew quicker than I was able to keep up with. It went from 2-3 students to over nine locations with over 400 kids. More kids means you’re “successful” but not if the quality is not there and it becomes diluted. So I scaled it back and started all over. It goes in cycles – a wave comes in, and a wave goes out. For instance, two years ago I had a lot of older students, and they went off to college and now I’m starting with a new batch. It’s a culture here. I am proud that considering the area we are in, we’re pretty ethnically diverse, and there are a lot of different bodies and shapes, and that’s important to me. Even though we’re doing hip-hop, they’re still getting basic jazz, ballet, modern, and salsa –specifically learning about Martha Graham, Lester Horton, Jose Limon, Celia Cruz, artists like that.

A lot of people think we just do hip-hop for little kids. Ironically, we have more services for the older ones than we do the younger ones. For example, if you’re a high school student and you don’t know what you want to do, we’ll hook you up with a current college student that’s going to school for that, as well as a professional in the field so you can gain perspective.

We’re also working with students with autism as well as other special needs through Carlisle NHS. What happens is as you get older, services drop off, and by the time you’re 21 they’re non-existent. We came up with the program “Empower” and we’re working on a documentary. The students and adults with autism and other special needs are helping put it together from beginning to end. We’re telling the story from their perspective. We’re also working on a website for special needs students and adults who are able to do a job, but need a job coach; to connect them with employers and raise funds for the assistance they need.

I use pop-culture to get kids’ attention, but we’re doing more than that. You can’t compete with what they’re seeing on social media, but I use pop-culture as a positive thing rather than a negative. It’s really much worse now than when I was growing. When I was growing up, hip-hop was clean and it was making a statement. Now, there’s so much swearing and inappropriate content, but I navigate around that and still try to use pop-culture as a positive influencer. So when they are a part of this with me, I work to be friends with them on Facebook and other social media channels, because I believe that if you’re going to post something for the whole world to see, then I get to have an opinion about it. If you don’t want me to have an opinion about it, then you need to keep it private. They also have the ability to see me there – I’m certainly not posting inappropriate pictures or arguments on my feed because I believe it’s important for me to set an example for my students, as their mentor. In the end, when you hold kids accountable like that, I end up not being as popular, but I’m okay with that – to me, it’s not about being popular, but about being a positive influence.

We’re in central Pennsylvania and we do have a decent amount of arts and opportunity here, but it’s hard to keep up with all the different pockets, groups, and organizations within the community. Even though I’m from here, I’m the third generation to grow up in Carlisle, I’ve been doing REACH! for the last twelve years, it’s still hard to keep up with it all. Everyone’s doing a lot of great stuff, but there’s got to be a way to connect all the dots, and that means everybody’s got to be committed to it. That’s what I would like to see in the future. – Jason Reed, Founder of REACH!