UNIVERSAL CITY, CALIFORNIA (LA ELEMENTS) 3/23/2018 – “There’s a thing called gratitude,” says this year’s City Gala Inspiration Award recipient, and founder of the just keep livin non-profit, actor Mathew McConaughey. “We believe that gratitude has residuals. We believe that the more you are thankful for the more, you’re going to create in your life to be thankful for.”

Gratitude is also the driving force behind City Gala, which gives back to the community by supporting a variety of charities. Ryan Long founded the annual event back in 2015 with the purpose of helping start-up non-profit organizations obtain critical funding. This year’s City Gala festivities were presented by Nova Wealth Management and held on March 4, 2018 at Universal Studios, Hollywood. A celebrity poker tournament as well as ticket sales, helped to raise funds for an array of outstanding non-profits. Charities benefitting from the event included the following: Already Always Amazing, Bright Futures Foundation, Feed A Billion, Fulfilled Families, Firelife Foundation, Project NOW, Conscious Capitalism, Child Liberation Foundation and My Life My Power.

McConaughey received this year’s Inspiration Award for his work with the just keep livin foundation. The acclaimed actor (Oscar winner for Dallas Buyers Club) co-founded the organization with his wife, Camilla Alves, back in 2008 in Los Angeles. The curriculum of the just keep livin foundation is now in over 30 schools nationwide. The foundation’s mission statement notes that it was founded “with the purpose of empowering high school students by providing them with the tools to lead active lives and make healthy choices for a better future.”

In his acceptance speech to the VIP guests and select members of the media gathered inside the Globe Theater, McConaughey shared the agenda by which just keep livin has been able to accomplish its goals. “We have an afterschool program,” says McConaughey. “It’s two hours on Tuesday and Thursday. The basis of it is fitness, nutrition, community service and gratitude. The fitness side is this: Someone comes in there, we have one girl that says, ‘Look, I’ve got three months to fit into a prom dress. My sister and I have one prom dress and I need to lose six pounds in three months to get that prom dress on.’ That’s a fitness goal. We’re going to help you lose that six pounds and stay right there with you. Other people are like, ‘Hey I’m trying to make the soccer team. I was out of shape and I couldn’t do it.’ Well let’s do what we have to do to help you make the soccer team this year. So, the fitness component is not trying to make everyone look like a supermodel, it’s just trying to achieve a goal that’s very personal to them.”

“The nutrition side of this is, for instance, a lot of these families are picking up a bag of five burgers and french fries for dinner, that’s $38. We go to those families and we go to those children and we say, “Look. For that same amount of money, let’s take you to the local supermarket, show you how you can get a bag of rice, vegetables and some meat, the same amount, a much healthier meal, and you get to go home and cook it with your family. Reciprocation as far as family is not only saying, ‘Hey, we’re eating better’ but also saying, ‘ ‘we’re spending more time with our family than we ever did because we’re cooking together.’

“The component community service, this is our demand that any of the children in our curriculum have to give back to their own community. You can come to our class, but if you’re going to come, you’ve got to do community service. Now me, when I was in high school, if you asked me to give you my Saturday, to go clean the beach or pack up things for the troops, I was not going to give you my Saturday. A hundred percent of these young men and women give up their Saturdays. They’re on the bus at 4 a.m. to go to these things and work all day. So the community service aspect of our program gives the students some ownership because they know they went and broke a sweat and did something to give back to their community.”

McConaughey acknowledged the role that gratitude has in the organization that he founded and in life in general. The students who join his foundation take part in an actual “gratitude circle,“ an activity that never fails to produce positive results. “So these children, these young men and women get around a circle after the class and they have to share out loud something they’re thankful for in front of everybody. This is a challenge to get started because think about it, in high school to say, ‘thank you’ is not really cool sometimes. To share with others something that you’re thankful for, it’s not really cool. I remember, the first few weeks of the gratitude circles, my wife and I were going around and sitting in with these kids and they would go, ‘Um, I’m thankful for the just keep livin Foundation’ and the next kid would go, ‘I’m thankful for the just keep livin Foundation,’ and they would go around in a circle and repeat each other. I was like, ‘No, no, come on man.’ And we noticed that they were feeling pressured about having to say some really big heart-felt thing they were thankful for. So, one day, it got to me and I said, ‘Man, I’m thankful I woke up this morning and got a really good kiss from my wife.’ It’s like yes; you can be helpful for these fun things. So all of a sudden they start saying, ‘I’m thankful it’s Halloween and I’m going to get some candy’ so they’re laughing at all these light things they were sharing that they were thankful for. But what that led to, it sort of popped the bubble on the pressure of saying thank you for things like, ‘my sister just got out of the hospital,’ ‘my mom came back home, I hadn’t seen her in three months,’ or ‘I made my grades and I’m going to graduate because I had a teacher, a tutor who really helped me out.’ So they started to share some really heartfelt things that changed their life, but what kick started it was the fun things that they were sharing. So gratitude, nutrition, exercise and community service are really the basis of all the just keep livin curriculum.”

McConaughey emphasized the importance of teachers to the success of just keep livin. “The teachers are the all-stars. It takes the enthusiasm and commitment of the teacher in that school, where our curriculum has the actual program to sit there and say, ‘I’m going to hustle this program during the school day. The students are going to hustle this program, and I’m going to be fully committed.’ These teachers, that’s where the money goes, these teachers on the ground.”

“Why work with high school students? Those are the last years where when you screw up, you just maybe get a demerit; go to the principal’s office. But after school, if you’re 18 and you’re out in the free world and you commit some of the same problems or crimes, you’re going to jail or worse. So we said, ‘Let’s get them at the crossroads. Students that are doing well, let’s keep them on the right track. Students that are off track, let’s try and get them on the right track, and make them make choices they can make that will pay them back later on in life and not put them in jail or worse. In Title 1 Schools, there’s a lot of kids on the school lunch program, a lot of the students come from single parent homes, there’s a 50 percent dropout rate in those Title 1 Schools, so that’s where we found our need. Also, students living in poverty are four times more likely to drop out of high school.”

McCaunehay noted the surprise feeling of safe haven that his foundation offers. “We had many students come up and we asked them, ‘what do you get from the program?’ Hundreds of students said, ‘I finally got a safe place to go after school.’ So we were wondering, what did they mean? ‘Well when I go home, there’s gang violence so I can’t even go outside.’ Others say to me, ‘When I get home, I sit on the couch and put on the TV as quick as I can because I’m hearing gunshots outside.’ We give them a safe place to go after school and we did not know when we started this that we would be offering a bare necessity like that. A lot of these students just need a safe place to go and we give them that. Also, after school sports and physical education are being cut, those are the first programs to go in schools, we all know that.”

With the physical activities addressing the issue of childhood obesity, as well as the added benefits of the emotional connections made through this program, it’s easy to see how just keep livin could make an impact. But with so many worthy charities , what sets this one apart? “Look, we know there’s millions of great causes to give our time and our money ,” says McConaughey. “But I want to know, if I’m going to spend my time, I want to know if it’s working. I’m happy to say that ours is and I’m going to give you some facts that I’m very proud to share with you. 90 percent of our students in our program, their attendance has increased in their schools. Remember this is a 50 percent dropout rate. 92 percent of the students in our class, our curriculum, their grades have improved. 95 percent of the students have maintained or improved their behavior. Not only from the teachers do we hear this, we hear this from their family, their parents at home saying, ‘My child respects what I do more. We get along better. His behavior is better. Her behavior is better.’ 98 percent of our students graduated from high school last year. So that’s the science behind what we’re doing. Thank you for the honor for the Inspiration Award thanks to the beneficiaries, and Ryan and all the great work that City Gala is doing to help out different communities.”

For more information on the City Gala, please visit their site.

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