Advocate helps youths find right path

When Toledoan Shawn Mahone is asked who he is, he humbly references what he does.

As a youth advocate, Mr. Mahone has dedicated his life to helping youths change unhealthy behavior.

“I don’t ever want to talk about ‘me,’” Mr. Mahone said. “I always want it to be about the vision and people that are around me.”

He is known to many simply as “Mr. Shawn,” and that’s how he likes it.

Mr. Mahone, 54, is the founder of the Young Men and Women for Change behavioral modification program, which aims to educate and empower young people to become productive, responsible, and law-abiding citizens. His youth programs have attracted thousands of people from around the country.

“More than a thousand youth and parents have participated in the program,” Mr. Mahone said. “Only 231 children have been back.”

Parents have not only come to Toledo from all over the state of Ohio, but also have traveled from Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina, and even as far as Arizona.

His behavior modification program is not a typical boot camp but rather a B.O.O.T. C.A.M.P., which stands for behavior, obedience, and observational training and community adolescent modification program.

The program has a focus on behavior modification, behavioral health, education, drug and alcohol treatment, anger management, parenthood accountability, and community involvement and awareness.

“When children come through our program, we want to be able to make sure that there are wraparound services for that child and their family so the whole family heals,” he said.

“It’s a program designed to help youth that are simply making unhealthy choices in life,” Mr. Mahone said. “So we’re talking about the youth that’s being disrespectful, disobedient, unruly, lying, stealing, getting into trouble at school, or getting kicked out.”

Mr. Mahone was born in Toledo to a mom who was just 14. He thrived as class president at Rogers High School, and later graduated from Owens Community College.

“My background is in criminal justice,” he said. “I used to be a drill instructor for the Kentucky Department of Corrections. We helped adult first-time felons aged 18 to 35.”

To inspire action, he is frequently heard sharing the quote “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” With a proactive approach, Mr. Mahone decided that reaching kids early to foster change, thereby deterring them from potentially entering the criminal justice system, would be a better plan.

“I figured, why not develop a program that can help youth ages 5 up to 17,” he said.

His vision prompted him to return home to Toledo, where he founded the program.

Helping others

Now a successful entrepreneur in Atlanta, Khane Collins was one of the beneficiaries of what was then called the Young Men for Change program when he was a young boy.

“My mom just noticed that I didn’t have any male guidance,” Mr. Collins said. “So she wanted to put me in a program to try to give me some structure and also to be around men because there weren’t any in my house.”

Mr. Collins said he was impacted immediately.

“It was extremely structured down to where we sit, how we stand, and how we’re supposed to carry ourselves,” he said. “It was kind of like a boot camp structure, something that I wasn’t really used to.”

Mr. Mahone and his team pushed a strong message of accountability so the young men were clear that there are consequences to all actions.

“It was just having that structure that he taught us and making sure that we understood that you had to be held accountable for your decisions,” Mr. Collins said. “I didn’t miss football practice. I wasn’t late because I knew there was going to be a consequence.”

Mr. Mahone’s control of the room resonated with him, inspiring him to become a role model to his teammates. Mr. Mahone became a mentor to young Mr. Collins, even teaching him how to tie a necktie.

“You see ties when you watch TV or see movies but I never knew how to tie a tie, where to get a tie, or that it was something that needed to be tied,” he said. “It might be small, but that was one of the big things that stood out to me as a 9 or 10-year-old kid.”

After graduation, Mr. Collins received a full scholarship to Cleveland’s Notre Dame College, becoming the first person in his family to go to college.

Now 27, and the owner of a successful private chef service as well as a residential cleaning service in nine states across the country, Mr. Collins said he wishes there were more teachers and programs like those from Mr. Mahone. He especially carries a deep appreciation for the way Mr. Mahone instructed the young men to communicate with women.

“You’re not talking back to women, you’re not raising your voice. He was big on that,” he said. “He really instilled that into us. He doesn’t play.”

“I wish more people, teachers, and programs taught this because nowadays people don’t really have that regard,” Mr. Collins added.

For the past 13 years, Mr. Mahone has been operating a program called Dose of Reality, a division of Young Men and Women for Change.

“Dose of Reality is literally our brand,” Mr. Mahone said. “This is a program where youth and parents come to us on Friday nights. Parents must stay for our parent accountability program and then the child or children are with us until 5 a.m. Saturday morning.”

Concerned that two of her children were headed down the wrong path, Jodie Banaszak came across the Dose of Reality program through a Google search.

“I called Shawn. I had never met him before. I did not know him at all, and I didn’t know anybody that had been through the program,” said the West Toledo mother of six.

“It is a very stark reality check for some of these kids when they walk through that door because all of their old tricks and schemes don’t work,” Ms. Banaszak said. “They go through a huge transformation. They get completely torn down, but then they’re built back up in about a span of 10 hours.”

‘Boot camp’

When people typically think of boot camp, they envision close contact, screaming, and yelling, Mr. Mahone said.

“That’s not what we are. You hear me use my voice because we have to give youth a dose of reality,” he said. “We’re here to help them understand that they don’t want to go down that road.”

His program’s technique and effectiveness is likened to that of police academies and Army boot camp, yet tailored for youths.

“Fast forward five years, she’s going to be a senior at Central Catholic, she has a 3.0 GPA, and three varsity letters,” Ms. Banaszak said of one of her daughters. “Life is not completely perfect, of course, but we were able to avoid going down the wrong path.”

To further develop his leadership skills, Mr. Mahone participated in the Minority Executives Leadership Program through the Center for Nonprofit Resources. He was paired with Joaquin Vega, president/​CEO at Lucas County Metropolitan Housing.

“I just believe that Shawn is a very committed, I will say, hungry, young man that is willing to do a good job for the community,” Mr. Vega said.

“What I experienced with Shawn throughout the process of mentoring is that he has the tools necessary to thrive.”

Anti-violence

Mr. Mahone is known for his anti-violence efforts around Toledo. Early in 2022, in talking about gun violence, Mr. Mahone told a Toledo vigil crowd “there is a war that’s going on in our city.”

“More parents are burying their child or children before the child or children are burying their parents,” he said later.

Mr. Mahone is passionate about the community and expressed his desire for collaborative efforts with the city and the local juvenile court system.

“My goal for Toledo was to have a program that puts Toledo on the map,” Mr. Mahone said. “We can have a facility here where we can create jobs and opportunity for children and parents to come from across the country and get a quality service not only through behavior mods, but also behavior health.”

His work in behavior modification has shown to be beneficial in effective case management, therapy, counseling, and psychotherapy, he said.

Tyler Ratajski Baer of Rossford agrees. The 25-year-old truck driver was a participant in Mr. Mahone’s Dose of Reality program over a decade ago.

“I was about 13, and I had lost my father when I was about 8 years old,” Mr. Ratajski Baer said. “So I was going through a rough patch of not knowing how to really act and my mom was a single parent.”

Unable to deal with his emotions, he began acting out. In addition to behavior modification, Mr. Mahone recommended mental health resources, which Mr. Ratajski Baer found invaluable.

“I think also with his program, it got me to the point where I started to build a better relationship with my mother,” Mr. Ratajski Baer said. “Shawn tells people you can’t just be a friend to your child, you have to be a parent as well.”

Mr. Ratajski Baer recalled something said in the program that helped alter his ways.

“When I went to Shawn’s program, he did his best in showing if you stay on that path it leads to either graveyard, prison yard, or dead,” he said.

“The most important thing that I realized was Shawn was very passionate about what he does. He’s not the type of person that does this for publicity or for the money. He does it because it’s his calling.

“He broke us down, and then he built us back up,” he said. “Shawn opened my eyes to a lot of things that made me a better person today.”

Mr. Mahone has also partnered with Toledo Public Schools to develop an in-school suspension program.

“They have embraced our program and we’ve been able to go in and reduce out-of-school suspension by 90 percent,” Mr. Mahone said.

The program works to put more of a focus on accountability.

“The motto that I use for TPS is keeping butts in the seats and not in the streets,” he said. “No longer would I allow there to be five and three days out-of-school suspension. So this year, we’re putting more of a focus on children understanding that suspension is not a vacation.”

Suspensions instead are served in school or at an off-site facility rather than home. The process also fosters parental accountability, he said.

Mr. Mahone is known for his presence at vigils, memorials, and funerals of those lost to violence. While his work is a labor of love, when he is not working to save and uplift youth, Mr. Mahone finds himself relaxing at his summer cottage in upper Michigan.

“I love being out, especially in the summertime,” he said. “And let me be honest, I love a good cigar, I love smooth jazz, I work out, I like good conversation, and I like to golf.”

Mr. Mahone also confessed a love and enjoyment of ballroom dancing, concerts, stage plays, and comedy shows.

A single father, Mr. Mahone brought up his two sons from infancy to adulthood. His youngest son is a recent graduate of St John’s Jesuit High School. Mr. Mahone unfortunately lost his eldest son to violence in 2017, further fueling his passion for saving youths.

“When working with youth, he can see something bigger and better inside each one of them,” said the Rev. Cedrick Brock, who is pastor at Mt. Nebo Baptist Church in Toledo.

“He’s a good man, he’s a man of integrity when it comes to service of what he’s involved in,” he said. “He gives it his best.”

Many young adults credit their beloved “Mr. Shawn” and the Young Men and Women for Change program for turning their lives around.

“He talked to us, he read the Bible to us, and at that point, I didn’t really understand but then when I actually read it myself, I understood that he had a purpose for what he was doing,” Mr. Ratajski Baer said.

He shared his belief that the program was God’s way of providing what was needed to inspire change in the younger generation.

“I can never repay him for everything he did for me. Instead of being like most of the kids that I grew up with that are either part of the system or they’re no longer here, I changed my life around,” he said.

Contact Sheila Howard at: showard@theblade.com.