Businessweek Extra-Paul Raether

the public eye. We're talking about Paul Raither. I have gotten to know him over the past few years, and I've actually been with him in Hartford, Connecticut, and that's really where this story happens. Dream Camp. He created it a couple of decades ago. Now as he thinks about his role as a philanthropist, he's got even bigger plans for what giving can look like going forward. Jason, you certainly said some nice things about me. We haven't seen each other for a while, but um, it's good too.

It's good to get reconnected. And yes, I have been trying to do some things for Trinity College and in Hartford, Connecticut, which is near and dear to my are well tell me about that. I was lucky enough to go to Hartford with you a few years ago. And you and I spent the day together, and you know it's clear when you're there that it is. It had a huge impression on you, not just the school, but the community.

Tell us about dream Camp, because that feels like the manifestation of a lot of what you think about, UH and what you're trying to do. Okay, well, listen in in in the late nineteen nineties, around nine, I had the idea that we needed to do something UM in the Hartford community. And when I say we, I'm talking about Trinity College and UM. You know, Trinity UM had always been sort of viewed by the community as you

know the kids up on the hill. Uh and Hertford in the late nineties was a city in distress and a city that was not clearly not doing well. The education system UH in Hartford was broken. UH. In fact, it was taken over several times by by the state because they ran out of money and be lost their accreditation. And and I said to myself, you know what we need if we're going to really change the cycle, UM, we need some education for these younger kids in particular.

And so I had this idea of trying to start a camp for kids sort of ages six to ten, because you know that that's when you really can get to get to these kids, because they're obviously very impressionable at that age, and you can teach them things that that they don't know and things that they're not necessarily going to learn in schools, particularly when the schools are not operating going very well. And um, Michael Rouse who runs a a company down in Philadelphia called SF Sports Camp.

I went to Michael and said, look, I've got this idea, you know, and here's my idea. Can you do something like this? And he said absolutely, I can definitely do this. And not only can I do this, this is really exciting. And he'd already you know, he's had he started this camp, um, you know, thirty plus years ago, this camp business. Uh. And he's been very successful. And he actually was running a camp at Greenwich Academy, uh in the summer here. Uh. So I've seen his work and known him well, and

I said, here's here's what I want to do. I want to create a program that will be tuition free for kids in Hertford. And I want to create a program that will be racially balanced, so it'll be one third African American one third Hispanic uh and one third white UH. And get these kids at age six to ten, bring them in UH and teach them a lot of

things that they really don't know. In addition to which, think about this, they're going to be on the Trinity College campus because I'd gone to the then president at at Trinity and said, look, here's here's the idea of here's what i'd like to do, um and and but I need your cooperation, I need your help, and I need your facilities, all of which they agreed to. So that's that's Jason, how it really you know, how it

really got started? Um and you know, I mean here we are twenty three years later, and frankly it's been a huge success. Well that's what I want to ask you. And I do want to get to the success of it,

the impact of it. But I want to ask you too, though, Paul, this is about and I feel like because of the virus, because of what happened about um George Floyd, what happened to him in Minneapolis, we're talking about so much of the inequalities and what we're discovering or really kind of putting out there is that we've got to end these bad cycles that don't provide everyone equally opportunities to ultimately succeed, whether it's an education, whether it's professionally, and also ultimately

to provide some wealth and you know, generational wealth that pulls everybody out of a bad situation. And I feel like this is kind of what you guys are going out breaking, that you know, rough cycle that unfortunately so many have to endure. Yeah, well that's what we're trying to do, Carol. Um. You know, look what I went when I was at Trinity, which was a long time ago, in the in the sixties, the neighborhood around Trinity was middle class to lower middle class. UM, basically people from

Italian and Polish heritage who worked in manufacturing jobs in Hertford. Uh. And those jobs all went away. Um, they all moved basically to you know, to the south where the work rules were easier for the companies and and and people. The people who moved into the neighborhood were basically Hispanic uh.

And so the neighborhood around Trinity changed dramatically. And you know, Trinity started this program under President Dobell uh in the mid nineties where they created the Learning Cord or which is you know, a street across the street from the main part of the Trinity campus UH, and with state funds and federal funds, built three new schools, a monesstory lower school, a Magnet middle school, and an upper high school that was for for science, mathematics, and dance in theater.

And so that was sort of the first step. And then on top of that, I said, well, okay, so that's great, but now what else can we do with with these kids? And so that's that's why I came up with the idea of you know, kids six to ten because in my mind, in my mind, education is the great love you were you know, really, you know, lovely in terms of telling us, Paul, what this camp sets out to do and how it works, I am curious about the impact of the camp and the success

that it's having on these six to ten year olds. Well, hopefully Carol is having a lot of success on these six We started with six to ten UH and then I think, you know, a seven years after we started the camp UM there was a sports camp UH at Trinity that had been there for thirty seven years, funded by the n C double A and the federal government, and that program was cut back and the Trinity program was eliminated, and so we went to the college and said, look,

we can't let these kids go uh. And so we merged the Sports camp into the Dream Camp and became a camp of two d and fifty kids from ages six to sixteen. And so the program is start with a child at the age of six, um, start with the five week summer program, uh, and then take these kids all the way through until their fifteen sixteen years old.

And ninety plus percent of our kids actually go to the full the full route through and then a significant number of those kids at sixteen to seventeen become counselors in training at the camp, so they're they're they're there with us for ten plus years us and then hopefully they go to college. And ninety plus percent of our kids that have gone through the program have actually gone on to college. So in that sense, in that sense,

it's really been a big success. But probably three years after we started the program, Michael Rouse, who I said earlier was the god that I went to to, you know, to try to implement this on a day to day basis, came to me and sit, Paul, we have to do something besides just the fifth five week program in the summer, we have to go full time. But in other words,

we have to create a program after school. So in the summer, at the five week program, you know, we picked the kids up in the morning, we bring them to the campus at Trinity, we feed them breakfast, uh, and then they've got a full day and then we put them on the bus and we take them home.

And then in the fall when we started the after school program, we picked these kids up then after school you know, four days, four days a week, and we bring them to Trinity uh and we tutor them in effect after school, and that tutoring is done almost exclusively by Trinity College students. So these kids are getting an opportunity to interact with you know, Trinity undergraduates, and the Trinity undergraduates are getting an opportunity to interface with with

these kids. And so it's it's a win win for everybody because they really get to see things that they otherwise wouldn't see it. So, um, so this is now a forty five week program um after school and then five weeks in the summer. So basically, you know, we've become a year round program. Um. You know with with these kids, and so you know, the statistics are great. I mean, ninety plus percent of these kids stay with us, ninety plus percent of these kids end up going to college.

Six of them at graduated from Trinity. That's so cool. That's great. Yeah, that's that's the Grand Slam right there. So it is it is the Grand Slam. Go ahead, So, Paul, I do have to ask you before we run out of time. You know, one of the things you've identified in this is something that we've really learned a lot about, unfortunately during the pandemic, which is the food and security that we're facing as a nation. So talk to us briefly about what you've done around that issue, because it's

really important, I think for people to understand. Okay, well there's actually two parts of it, but let's do with what happened in in you know, in March. Uh, you know, schools, schools went virtual in Connecticut, and under Connecticut state law, schools have to provide at least one meal a day to the kids. Okay, so the kids are not in school, so those meals are not being provided, and so all of a sudden there's a hole in uh, you know, in their daily routine in terms of in terms of

getting fed. And so Michael Rouse again came to me and said, we need to shift gears. We need to continue to do the after school program, but it's going to be virtual, just like uh, you know their school is during the day. What we need to create we need to create a program um that will provide food for for people. And so I said, well, give me a budget, give me an idea, tell me how you're going to do this. And he came up with a program where he teamed up with chef Frankie Slenza, who

was in an Emmy Award winning cooking show. Uh chef, uh you know somebody that he knows down in the Philadelphia area. And he created a series of menus uh and put together food packages and the recipes are in English and in Spanish, and he's got videos and so we're start. We started delivering meals in late March, uh you know too, to these families in Hartford. So they didn't have to come and stand in line at a

food bank. The food was actually delivered to them by people who worked for E. S. S. Sports camps or Trinity undergraduate students. So the food was coming up from Philadelphia, coming into Hartford and then dispatched to these families. And so we did that from you know, the end of March, you know, right up through the beginning of camp, and

we delivered over ten thousand meals. And that was Paul Ray, their senior advisory partner at the private equity firm kk R. You've heard of that, but you might not have heard about the work that he has done in Hartford, Connecticut. Trinity College is so devoted to that school. Really enjoyed catching up with him. Yeah, and I just love that, you know, identifying a community that just needs some help,

especially for its younger population. What struck me he said that about the kids at attend Dream Camp ultimately go off to college. That was really impressive. You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra and be sure to catch us every day Monday through Friday at two pm Wall Street Time. I'm Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser, and I'm Jason Kelly. This is Bloomberg