Progress is in the air once again. A long-time dream of HCYR and the Floyd A. and Kathleen C. Cailloux Foundation of Kerrville will open to its first residents on October 15. Final touches are being put on the first apartments, with young adults helping to choose paint colors and formulate rules. With this opening, Enhanced Horizons, a residential and educational campus for young adults, ages 18 - 23, will become reality.

Throughout its 31-year history, HCYR has helped youths in transition to adulthood through various after-care programs and scholarship funds. In 2007, the Cailloux Foundation decided to help HCYR take the next step by purchasing Star Ranch near Ingram and giving it to HCYR for a new campus dedicated specifically to providing residential and educational support to graduates of hill country area foster care programs. Called Enhanced Horizons, the new campus will eventually provide apartment space and a community college atmosphere for up to 35 young adults in transition.

Mike Wood, HCYR’s Charter School Superintendent, and his wife Pam, will become the first adult supervisors living at Enhanced Horizons as the program begins. Mike and Pam have felt and responded to a calling to oversee development of EH. Pam’s career at UTSA in providing guidance to college students will serve the new program well. Both Mike and Pam are educators at heart.

According to Mike, "Our HCYR family strives to give our children a sound foundation and strong roots in their lives. We also desire to give our older charges wings and guidance as they experience the many complex challenges of entering adulthood in this complicated world. Now HCYR has been blessed with the gift of Enhanced Horizons to help our older youth, after they graduate from high school, in the important stage of transition to independence."

Recent Ranch graduate Bre’Ann Hansen has been working closely with Gary and Carol Priour, Mike and other Ranch staff to help work on needed physical plant repairs and refurbishing to launch this new campus. She and her fellow Ranch graduate Brittany McClary are the first young adults to participate in and help develop this important new program. After spending the summer living at Enhanced Horizons and working as trained summer camp counselors, Brittany started college at UTSA in San Antonio, and Bre’Ann began fulltime employment as a teacher’s aide at Cailloux Charter School on HCYR’s Ingram campus.

Bre’Ann is currently helping pick out paint and flooring for her new residence at Enhanced Horizons, as well as assisting in public speaking, telling about the need for local support of this transitional program for our Ranch graduates and other area foster youth. She is an important young partner in this new HCYR initiative, and we take pride in seeing her join other Ranch graduates in being a positive model of success while giving time to help make improvements to our service programs.

According to HCYR Executive Director Gary Priour, "This reminds me of the opening of our first children’s residence in 1978. We started with two girls from Kerrville CPS that October, and have been growing ever since."

Please contact Gary, Carol, Mike, and Bre’Ann for additional information about the new Enhanced Horizons program.