rich & yvonne dutra- st. john | challenge day

Founders of Challenge Day: Imagine a school where every child feels safe, loved, and celebrated. This is the vision behind Challenge Day, an award-winning program for middle and high school students. The Challenge Day program teaches tools for peaceful conflict resolution, and inspires teens and adults to work together as forces for positive change in the world. Rich and Yvonne Dutra-St. John created Challenge Day in 1987. Through their years of professional experience with teens and families, Rich and Yvonne recognized that teasing, bullying, and other forms of social oppression are symptoms of a greater underlying problem: separation, isolation, and loneliness. Rich and Yvonne designed the Challenge Day program to build connection and forgiveness between young people, and to inspire youth to become positive forces of change in their schools and communities. For over 20 years the Challenge Day program has reached hundreds of thousands of young people around the world. It has received numerous awards from the Juvenile Justice System, the D.A.R.E. Officers Association, government officials, and many school districts and cities nationwide. Challenge Day has also been featured in the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, in the Emmy-winning documentary Teen Files: Surviving High School, and on The Oprah Winfrey Show.