Ozarks Teen Challenge opening new academic building for at risk youth in Branson West, Mo.

BRANSON WEST, Mo. (KY3) - Ozarks Teen Challenge is opening a new academic building for at-risk kids in Branson West.

Ozarks Teen Challenge provides a 15-month, residential, faith-based substance abuse, and behavioral rehabilitation program geared towards at-risk youth ages 12-17

The program also provides young men with individual counseling and mentorship, a customized academic track, leadership training, life-skills development, and community service opportunities. Right now, the teens live, eat, and learn in one building. The construction of the academic site will provide them will more space to learn and grow outside the comfort of their normal environments.

This new facility sits on over 200 acres of rolling Ozarks hills adjacent to Table Rock Lake. This celebration marks the initial step of Ozarks Teen Challenge’s plan to expand the number of young men they can enroll in their long-term residential program. Jonathan Hudson has been in the program for a little over a year. He says he is thrilled about the new space. He thinks it will be quieter and allow him to focus more on his schoolwork. He says he has grown and learned so much by being here in just a year.

“When I first came here, I expected the program to change my circumstances, my relationships with my family. It would repair them,” said Hudson. “Instead, I found out it actually repaired me.”

”There is a great need for us to help these men because it’s our future, it’s our next generation,” said Ozarks Teen Challenge executive director Lowlan Breaux. “The number one killer of men in Missouri ages 18-44 is drug overdose.”

The new construction also provides their students with a state-of-the-art learning center, small-group, and several counseling spaces. The building will officially open on August 25.

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