Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode of Catholic Education Matters, host Troy Van Vliet sits down with veteran educator, actor, and filmmaker Jimmy Crescenzo, founder of the East End Boys Club, to explore how faith, mentorship, and authentic relationships can transform the lives of young people. Drawing from his own experience growing up without a father, Jimmy shares how adversity shaped his mission to help at-risk youth build confidence, resilience, and purpose through theatre, filmmaking, and life-skills mentoring. Together, they discuss the importance of strong families, the role of community in supporting the next generation, the unique strengths of Catholic education, and why placing God at the center of education and life provides young people with the foundation they need to flourish. This inspiring conversation is a powerful reminder that one committed mentor—and one caring community—can change the course of a life.
If you are interested in our school, make sure to check out our website:
🌐 https://www.sjp2academy.com/
Follow us on social media:
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sjp2academy/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sjp2academy
🐦 X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/SJPIIAcademy
- (00:00) - Intro
- (02:35) - Growing Up in an Italian Family & Losing His Father at Eight
- (07:21) - Why Family Dinners and Adversity Shaped His Life
- (09:12) - Turning Adversity Into Strength Instead of Victimhood
- (13:45) - From Acting and Teaching to Founding the East End Boys Club
- (17:20) - Reaching the Young Men Everyone Else Overlooked
- (20:20) - Expanding the Mission: Boys Clubs, Girls Programs & Lasting Mentorship
- (26:00) - Mentors, Life Skills & Why the Program Is Free for Every Student
- (30:15) - The Challenges Facing Education Today & the Importance of Faith
- (34:17) - Why Catholic Education Continues to Produce Strong Leaders
- (37:09) - Can Faith Be Integrated Into Mentorship Programs?
- (41:03) - Bureaucracy, Community Support & Serving Youth Outside the System
- (47:01) - Why Independent and Catholic Schools Are Thriving
- (50:45) - Ensuring Every Child Has Access to a Faith-Filled Education
- (54:02) - Incredible Success Stories from the East End Boys Club
- (58:20) - Why Relationships Matter More Than Résumés
- (01:01:45) - Preparing Young People for Careers, Leadership & Life
- (01:04:59) - The Simple Skills That Make Young People Stand Out
- (01:08:05) - Building Lasting Connections Through Respect and Gratitude
- (01:12:30) - Final Reflections: Faith, Mentorship & Changing Lives
Creators and Guests
What is Catholic Education Matters ?
Welcome to Catholic Education Matters the podcast that celebrates the beauty of Catholic education, highlighting excellence in academics, athletics, and the transformative power of faith. Join us as we share the stories of those making a lasting impact on Catholic education.
[00:00:01] Intro: Welcome to Catholic Education Matters, the podcast that celebrates the beauty of Catholic education, highlighting excellence in academics, athletics, and the transformative power of faith. Join us as we share the stories of those making a lasting impact on Catholic education. Let's begin.
[00:00:26] Troy Van Vliet: Good day everyone and welcome to Catholic Education Matters. My name is Troy Van Vliet and I am happy today to have Mr. Jimmy Crescenzo with us.
[00:00:33] Jimmy Crescenzo: Thank you. I'm Jim Crescenzo
[00:00:34] Troy Van Vliet: Jim, okay. I'll call you Jim then.
[00:00:35] Jimmy Crescenzo: Jimmy or Jimmy's good.
[00:00:37] Troy Van Vliet: All right. Perfect. Thanks for coming.
[00:00:39] Jimmy Crescenzo: My pleasure.
[00:00:40] Troy Van Vliet: We've had some chats already here.
[00:00:42] Jimmy Crescenzo: We have and it's good. It's good. Loosens it all up.
[00:00:47] Troy Van Vliet: I'm going to tell, I'm going to read off here just a little bit about your background tell you a little bit about what and then we'll go from there and we'll get started. So James, Jim, Jimmy, Chris Enzo, is the founder of the East End Boys Club and an organization dedicated to empowering marginalized youth aged 13 to 19. Does that sound right?
[00:01:09] Jimmy Crescenzo: That's correct.
[00:01:09] Troy Van Vliet: Yep. Okay. So with over forty years experience in theater, film and television, it has created a unique program that equips young men with skills in filmmaking, writing, technical applications, fostering confidence and personal growth.
[00:01:23] Jimmy Crescenzo: Whoever wrote it did a nice job.
[00:01:25] Troy Van Vliet: Okay. Well, that would be credit to Silveria and it's definitely Beautiful. So the East End Boys Club under your leadership provides life skills, training, emotional support and educational guidance, helping young men navigate challenges such as gang influence, addiction and mental health issues.
[00:01:44] Jimmy Crescenzo: Amen.
[00:01:44] Troy Van Vliet: The club's individualized approach emphasizes self actualization, accountability and recognition of each member's potential. Jim's commitment to the EEBC is celebrated annually at a gala event showing members, achievements, reinforcing their hard work and dedication. Jim's efforts have gained oh, sorry, have garnered praise from community leaders and have made a significant impact on the lives of many young men, guiding them towards a brighter future. Jim, God bless you for what
[00:02:22] Jimmy Crescenzo: you Thank you.
[00:02:23] Troy Van Vliet: That is absolutely awesome. So, before we dive into the East End Boys Club, let's learn a little bit more about you first, your background. You're Vancouver originally?
[00:02:35] Jimmy Crescenzo: I am. My family immigrated here from Italy in 1956 with my brother and my sister both born in Italy and they're just outside of Naples in a city called Avellino and then from Avellino they went to a small Paese, Monta Drei I think it was. And they came over in 'fifty six. I was born in 'fifty eight. I was born here in Vancouver.
[00:03:04] My father was a barber. And in those days in Italy, and even when they came here, barbers were in demand. And this is before all the hairstyling.
[00:03:15] Troy Van Vliet: And well respected.
[00:03:16] Jimmy Crescenzo: And very well respected.
[00:03:17] Troy Van Vliet: Kind of like an airplane pilot or something.
[00:03:19] Jimmy Crescenzo: But bing, yes, exactly. Like an airline pilot. You know what, my father, he came here, he was very good at what he did when he first came. He started cutting hair in the basement of our house, all the relatives that came from Italy. By the time it was said and done, we had more than 200 relatives that were here and very few that are left in Italy now.
[00:03:42] Troy Van Vliet: Oh, really?
[00:03:42] Jimmy Crescenzo: And so they all came. One brother would come and phone all the other brothers or the sisters and say, Okay, I know what's going on. This is a community that we're all going to live in, in East Vancouver. And people would come over being encouraged by people that were already here, So, family when I was born here in 'fifty eight, as I got older, I remembered some of the incredible stories and the importance of family. And with Italians, man, tell you, they would love their sons and their, you know, their daughters and just that they would give their life to them.
[00:04:27] And that's what I felt. And my father unfortunately passed away in 1966 and was eight years old.
[00:04:38] Troy Van Vliet: Oh, tough one.
[00:04:39] Jimmy Crescenzo: And I'll never forget it. Because Italians, especially Italian women, they would wear black.
[00:04:49] Troy Van Vliet: Some
[00:04:50] Jimmy Crescenzo: for the rest of their lives. And to essentially grieve. And I guess I'm telling you this because this is a part of my work. I was emotionally intelligent when I got out of high school because I looked around and I saw all these emotions and Italians are emotional people. My mom had a very difficult time for a lot of years.
[00:05:21] And so, you know, she raised three kids under the age of 13. I was eight, my brother was 11, my sister was 13. My sister had to go to work in the Renzulu food market. One of our relatives, he was kind enough to give her a job. And so there she was, every day after school, weekends, working, slicing mortadella and salami.
[00:05:45] But the money came back to us. My brother went to work at eleven delivering papers. And there I was at eight. I was still trying to figure out what's going on here. And it was a very sad home for a lot of years.
[00:06:01] Fortunately for family, they would always be encouraging and supporting us. But I'll never forget the one day when I was in the house, this is after everybody came over after the funeral, so you have food. And I'll never forget my uncle putting his shoulder, his hand on my brother's shoulder. At 11 years old, he said, Now you're the man of the house. And I watched that and I look back now and I go, Man, that was a wrong thing to do.
[00:06:35] The amount of pressure that my brother felt to be not only a brother, but to be a father. And so, you know, that was a tough time. Growing up without a father though encouraged me to take all of the emotional stuff that I was learning and so that I could apply it And that's why I got into theatre and film and television. I wanted to tell stories and I wanted to be able to teach kids to tell stories. And through that they would garner the, I guess, the knowledge, you know, how they navigate through the world.
[00:07:21] At 10, 11 years old, man, I would have already lived a bunch of lives by the time I got high school at 13. But the only thing that really was missing for me was the fact that I didn't have a father coming home and sitting around the table. But my mom made sure that every night, 05:00, you're gonna be sitting your butt down and you're gonna have dinner with us. And for that one hour from five to six, that was really important. That was the bond that would start to take place.
[00:07:56] And I think the kids of today are missing that.
[00:08:00] Troy Van Vliet: Are they ever yeah.
[00:08:02] Jimmy Crescenzo: Everybody takes their plate. One guy goes, Hey, Thanks a lot. I need to unwind. Poof. Downstairs.
[00:08:07] Yeah. And you're not sitting around talking about familial, values. Whereas with my mom, she was heartbroken, but we sat around the table and we talked. So every night it was different. You had pasta every night except one night it was pasta and peas, the second night it was pasta and beans, another night it was pasta and broccoli, another night it was pasta and what was the other one?
[00:08:36] Cauliflower?
[00:08:37] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah.
[00:08:37] Jimmy Crescenzo: And so there we were and on the weekends, that's when we had Segundo. Segundo stood for second. In other words, you had the pasta with the peas, but you also got a fettina, a little bit of veal or beef sliced up. No barbecues in. My mom would put it on a rack and then she would basically do it on the stovetop.
[00:09:03] Yep. And you had the lines grilled so it made it feel like it was So
[00:09:09] Troy Van Vliet: this Yeah.
[00:09:12] Jimmy Crescenzo: Fueled my heart and a lot of people often ask, What is it? Why are you being able to This is not pride but it's important that I tell you this and it's important for all the kids that I've taught. I always say to them that being average is not good enough. And that method, thathow can I put it to you?theory, in those days, I was trying to instill that in you have to learn how to address and hug the adversity?
[00:09:57] Troy Van Vliet: Right,
[00:09:58] Jimmy Crescenzo: yeah. I don't care if you are going be a lawyer, are to be a doctor, you are going to be a drama teacher, you are going to have to deal with adversity. We all do. The trick is, how do you not play the victim?
[00:10:12] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, you have to have adversity make you. Absolutely. Not knock you down, not
[00:10:16] Jimmy Crescenzo: knock you down, are right, make you. And that's a tough one. You know, I've worked with kids that are in and out of the gang world, addiction, and then I'm working with a lot of young men that are dealing with accepting mediocrity. So I look around the room and I go, Okay, how are we doing everybody? Good?
[00:10:41] Do the attendance and then I would say, Rico, how are doing? You're Rico, right? Okay, yeah. And then poof, plant it. And then it was like, How do you get them up?
[00:10:55] We're in theater. Let's start developing some confidence, building self esteem. And those are the hardest young men to work with.
[00:11:06] Troy Van Vliet: They are
[00:11:06] Jimmy Crescenzo: the ones who are accepting mediocrity or they lack inspiration aspiration to do something special and purposeful in their lives. And some of them would say to me, Sir, I'm not going to be a drama actor, but what do you want to do? They'd go, I want to be in business. Okay, let me tell you about one of my friends, Michael Sickich, who was in our drama programme. And Michael was a very confident guy.
[00:11:35] But when he did the plays, he had to learn a different confidence. Okay, why are you telling me this story? Well, because right now he is a very, very successful entrepreneur, businessman and he has an own real estate company. And they say, Yeah, I guess, well guess what? When Michael gets a gig, in other words, he's going to go and sell a tower because the builders have brought him in, Prior to that, Michael had to go into a meeting and do a presentation, let's say to the Boza family.
[00:12:08] And once he got into that presentation mode, he stand had up and tell the stories about what he's going to do in order to sell those sweets. What else do you want to talk about? A doctor? No problem. Let's sit.
[00:12:26] Let's talk about a doctor. What happens with the doctor? Does he need to have confidence and build his self esteem? I don't know. Do they just sit in a room one on one?
[00:12:36] Yeah. But I said, You know what? My doctor, and good chances are your doctor, they might be teaching at the university level. And they go into the hospital and maybe they're teaching them about the possibility of becoming a GP and let's go through it. Confidence is needed even if you're going to be sitting there talking to someone that's a patient of yours.
[00:12:56] Now when I'm talking to the patient, I'm a doctor. I better be really good at believing in myself and telling this patient that could be difficult that here's the path that you need to go on and I'm going to go with you. You're lacking that confidence, you're not going to be as how can I put it to you, as effective?
[00:13:25] Troy Van Vliet: Right.
[00:13:27] Jimmy Crescenzo: So, sorry, went on.
[00:13:29] Troy Van Vliet: No, no, no, no, no. That's okay. That's great. Well, me bring it back to the beginning a little bit and then we'll delve into what you were talking about even more. So your career in film, you said it's forty plus years.
[00:13:45] Jimmy Crescenzo: Yeah.
[00:13:46] Troy Van Vliet: And then when did the East End Boys Club
[00:13:49] Jimmy Crescenzo: start? Yeah. Was
[00:13:52] Troy Van Vliet: did
[00:13:52] Jimmy Crescenzo: it ten, twelve years ago.
[00:13:54] Troy Van Vliet: Okay.
[00:13:55] Jimmy Crescenzo: And it was by that point, what happened is I started teaching at age twenty one twenty two in 1981. At twenty twenty two years of age, looked around and I go, Oh, this is gonna be something. Some of these Italian kids in those days, all of our Italian families were living in East Van. Mhmm. Hey, Jimmy.
[00:14:18] How you doing? And then I pull him aside and go, Listen, Rico, you can't call me that. I said, Why do you want me to call you? I know you. My dad said he knows your dad.
[00:14:27] Know you. You can't do that. You've got to be able to talk as Mr. C even. And so, anyway, so I had to do that Uh-huh.
[00:14:35] And when I started to establish a rapport and how I'm gonna I have to I guess, what's the word I'm looking for? That was hard on me the first few years, I was very young and, but anyway, I found my way and I forgot the question. Can you believe this?
[00:14:56] Troy Van Vliet: Well, going well, that's okay. Going back to East End Boys Club started, but I mean, started early with acting and then about ten years ago,
[00:15:05] Jimmy Crescenzo: Thank East End Boys you. I started theatre program in 1981. Why theatre? Because I just started acting. I had high school theater.
[00:15:16] I didn't have any other theater training. I did when I went back to university in 1977, 'seventy six. So I started with theater. My goal was not only do I want to teach these kids and prove to everybody that these kids can do great things on stage, especially in East Van compared to what was going on on the West Side. So what I mean by that is I thought, Okay, so I want to be able to build a really reputable program.
[00:15:44] I want the kids to understand how to get to the next level in life. What are the pieces that we need to put together, learn about it in drama, and then apply them to whatever it is we choose to do with our lives? I did that. It was very successful. I really wanted to show the West Side that the East Side could do some great things.
[00:16:06] We entered theater festivals where 25, 26 plays would be shown over the course of five to six nights. Three shows at a time. They were all one act plays where you would get awards at the end of the festival. I entered that because the theater program never won anything at Templeton prior to me going to Templeton as a teacher. Anyway, lots of awards.
[00:16:36] Best play, best stage crew, best actor, ensemble acting. And then to watch those kids receive that, it was an elation. It was a spiritual experience. It was unreal. You don't need drugs.
[00:16:51] What you need is to figure out how do I get to that next level and that should be my air that needs to fill in my lungs. So I did that. Then I wanted to start a film program and I did. And I started a film program and I wanted to essentially How do I get those kids that are over there that are quiet and sitting in a corner? Or there's this other kid, I can look at them and they're quite academic.
[00:17:20] They don't want to be on stage but I can get them into film. They don't have to be actors. Let's teach you sound. Let's teach you lighting. Let's teach you script writing.
[00:17:32] And so now I was able to gather more sheep as we say. Perfect.
[00:17:39] Troy Van Vliet: And this was all pre East End Boys Club? Yeah.
[00:17:41] Jimmy Crescenzo: Okay. So then this is why I get into the Boys Club. There were a whole bunch of kids that I was looking at and they weren't involved in sports, they weren't involved in any kind of extracurricular club. So that after school, they'd be sitting in the front of the school having a cigarette. Mhmm.
[00:18:00] Those are the boys that I would talk to the SLO, the school liaison officer, and they would tell me, hey, listen, that guy over there, his name is Zin. You should know that he's a pretty high level gangster. Oh. Really? And he goes, oh, yeah.
[00:18:16] Try talking to him. And I said, okay. Sure. Hey, Zin. How are doing?
[00:18:21] I'm just fine. Thank you. You're mister Crescenzo. Right? I go, yeah.
[00:18:25] Am. How are doing? Good, good. I was recommended that I speak with you. I'd love to invite you into a program that I'm just starting up and it's called the Boys Club.
[00:18:36] Oh yeah, and what's that about? I said, Well, it's about learning how to become self confident, build some self esteem skills in you and provide you with opportunities that no other program is going to give you. Oh yeah, and what's that about? I said, Look, the owner of the Canucks, Mr. Francesco Acolini, is a donor to my programs and has been since 1981.
[00:19:03] And he's going to come in and speak to us. Oh yeah, and what would he speak about? I said, All the guest speakers that we bring in will be men that come and have faced adversity, but had overcome it. And this is their story. And when you hear Mr.
[00:19:19] Akinliet's story, he grew up in his van, went to Templeton, look where he is now. Oh yeah, but all that money was given to him by his father. No, it wasn't. But that family really kicked off in the eighties and those kids were working after school with their fathers. And so they came to a really high level of achievement, obviously.
[00:19:41] We can teach you that and it doesn't have to be me, it can be all these different men, we're gonna come in and speak with you. That's how I started the Boys Club.
[00:19:52] Troy Van Vliet: Sorry, what year did you say that
[00:19:54] Jimmy Crescenzo: was? It was '10 what are we at now? '26, I should know this in 2008.
[00:20:02] Troy Van Vliet: 2008?
[00:20:03] Jimmy Crescenzo: Wow. And I retired in ten years, in 2018. But what I did was when I got out, I wanted to expand it a bit. And so, this is why. And the boys then, we started, we had maybe five, six kids.
[00:20:19] That's it. Next year, maybe we had eight or 10. Next year, we had maybe 10 or 12. And now we're at a point where, you know, we're in three different high schools for boys clubs. Yep.
[00:20:35] And we launched a girls program two years ago.
[00:20:39] Troy Van Vliet: Oh, good.
[00:20:39] Jimmy Crescenzo: Along the same principles. Yep. So that's how come we started it. And then when I retired, there was a huge need still. And I said, Okay, I'm not retiring.
[00:20:55] Let's kick this up a notch. We still use theater. We still use film and television to do all those things about building confidence and self esteem. When a young man graduates from our program in grade 12, we now have an alumni program that we started so that we do not stop that support because we have these 12 to 15 kids and an alumni program that they run on their own, except obviously with input from me. And they continue to have this very important work.
[00:21:33] And I was talking earlier about the Sauder School of Business and how the Sauder School of Business is one of the best programs in the country when it comes to business. And they have lots and lots and lots of people applying. Our kids get in because they have to also tell a story. It's not only are you getting great marks but when they write a story about themselves, who they are, what they were used to do, the most influential thing that ever happened in their lives, They spoke about the boys club and all the men that they met and the women that they met when they came in and they did their presentations. Those relationships didn't start.
[00:22:18] Mr. Ackolini still funds and still spends time with the young people that need guidance and support. So anyway, there's so much more to tell you but I
[00:22:32] Troy Van Vliet: don't want to raise Yeah, no, no, no, That's all great stuff. So you're impacting young men's lives. How many boys will be in the group now?
[00:22:43] Jimmy Crescenzo: So in East Van, we work in the basement of Saint Francis of Assisi Parish. In the program there, have 50.
[00:22:53] Troy Van Vliet: 50? Wow.
[00:22:54] Jimmy Crescenzo: Then we have a program at Eric In Eric Amber, this is our first year and right now we have 15. But they're considerably, let's just say these guys are more at risk. And so the numbers to keep it to 15 to 20, that's exactly the number I need for now. We'll boot it up a notch next year. Anyway, so then we have a boys club at David Thompson Secondary School.
[00:23:28] And so we're between 18 to 20 young men there.
[00:23:33] Troy Van Vliet: Wow.
[00:23:34] Jimmy Crescenzo: This is the second year there, that's why we've bumped it up a notch. Yep. And then we have girl programs. We have combined with the girls in the East Van as well as when I say East Van, working out of the church.
[00:23:47] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah.
[00:23:48] Jimmy Crescenzo: And then we have another group that works out at Sir Charles Tupper. Yep. And Charles Tupper has, this is crazy, between sixty and eighty girls. You think there's a need?
[00:24:00] Troy Van Vliet: My goodness.
[00:24:01] Jimmy Crescenzo: Is ever?
[00:24:02] Troy Van Vliet: Is there ever?
[00:24:03] Jimmy Crescenzo: Big time and I'm not involved with the school board at all.
[00:24:10] Troy Van Vliet: Good for you.
[00:24:10] Jimmy Crescenzo: Keep It's it that exactly the way I'm gonna keep it because you should. The bureaucracy that I go through, I said it's not worth it. The very first thing to say to you, Oh my God, do you have this form signed and do you have this? Wait a minute, you can't teach that. Yeah, but after school.
[00:24:29] No, no. So walked away in 2019 and it was the best decision I could ever make and the school system is filled with some really good people and then there's some people that perhaps should work somewhere else and in a different
[00:24:45] Troy Van Vliet: think you're too kind. Position.
[00:24:47] Jimmy Crescenzo: I'm being very kind. Sorry,
[00:24:54] Troy Van Vliet: Silveria.
[00:24:54] Jimmy Crescenzo: I'm out of control.
[00:24:57] Troy Van Vliet: When I leave, they're all going to go,
[00:24:59] Jimmy Crescenzo: Oh my God, that guy.
[00:25:01] Troy Van Vliet: No, this is fantastic. This is, so this is like an extracurricular thing with school basically, because this is filling in, like you're saying, lot of these kids aren't, they're not doing stuff, they're not into sports or they're not playing sports, the public system sports programs aren't that great according
[00:25:21] Jimmy Crescenzo: tell you to 2020 very honestly, very far and few between. There are some great schools in the public system that do hold those wonderful basketball programs. But you wanna spread that out a bit and have a look at, you know, economically? Yeah. Come to East Van, how many kids go to school in East Van that can't afford to play hockey?
[00:25:44] Yeah. Yeah. Hockey is a very expensive sport. It's like right out of control. So we wanted to fill the gap.
[00:25:52] Troy Van Vliet: So speaking about money then, what does it cost for the family in the boys club?
[00:26:00] Jimmy Crescenzo: First of all, our kids are enrolled and they don't pay 1p towards any of the work that we do. So we raise money and what we do is we basically offer opportunities for our young people to take advantage of. What am I talking about? Well, we have a program where we teach two workshops a month and we're teaching life skills. We have twice a month where we bring in professionals and some people that are not professionals.
[00:26:43] We bring in trades people to come and talk about what's out there in the world today.
[00:26:49] Troy Van Vliet: But they are professionals.
[00:26:50] Jimmy Crescenzo: They are, yeah! And they have been so incredible. Let me tell you a story. I had four programs out in Delta and I had to pull it back because it just became so big and I didn't wanna get to that point. I wanna make sure that the 200, 300 kids that we work with, that they're given all the opportunities.
[00:27:21] Right. So, what ended up happening is with our young people, they need attention. They need somebody to be with them. People say to me sometimes, Well, how do you get there? How do you get into the place, the heart that can maybe let's fire it up a bit and get that heart pumping and let's get excited about doing stuff.
[00:27:49] So the mentors that we have, right now in the boys club we have about seven, eight mentors and these are men that come from the community and when we have our meetings with 50 kids every week, that's only one location, these mentors are like assistant coaches. They have lots to offer each and every single one of them.
[00:28:16] Troy Van Vliet: And they're volunteers?
[00:28:17] Jimmy Crescenzo: And they're volunteers. Yep. So these men are at the top of their fields, whatever their field is. Phil Moore, for example. I think he went to St.
[00:28:29] Thomas. I don't know if it's St. Thomas Moore of Aquinas. He did, right? St.
[00:28:32] Thomas Moore. Phil Moore went there. Well, Phil Moore is in the top 1% in real estate across the country. Him and his wife Doris Gee. He travels to Ottawa all the time because he's on the board of directors for the realtors across the country.
[00:28:52] Well, Phil Moore comes in and he speaks to the boys. First thing boys do, I find kids as well, girls are When I started teaching, they looked at me and said, Well, what do you do? You're a teacher. And I go, Yeah, they're pretty smart. They go, Isn't it true?
[00:29:16] I think it was my dad that told me this. He said, You know, those who can
[00:29:22] Troy Van Vliet: Can do teach?
[00:29:23] Jimmy Crescenzo: Yeah, bingo. They weren't gonna believe me that I was an actor. So I had to put a montage of video stuff, video collection of films, episodic television that I worked on. When I showed that, then it went, Okay. You know?
[00:29:44] Yeah. Yes, so we hear it from everybody else in our lives, even my parents, this, this and that. But at the end of the day, I'm looking around going, Hey, how did you get into this? And your life isn't like mine. So, going back, in terms of how many kids you had asked the question, and right now with the girls group and with the boys programmes, we have about 300 kids that we work with.
[00:30:15] The teachers, we do have some teachers that are in our programme that are mentors. They breathe a sigh of relief. Let me talk about this that I can in Out this
[00:30:30] Troy Van Vliet: of the regular teaching curriculum. Yeah. What's
[00:30:34] Jimmy Crescenzo: going on in schools now? Look, you want to go, okay, please. Let's go, guys. Bring it in. Yeah.
[00:30:41] Principal, boom, phones up. Hey, listen. Can't use that term. What's the term? Guys.
[00:30:50] Ladies, gents, they, they'll, what is it? No,
[00:30:56] Troy Van Vliet: they, them.
[00:30:57] Jimmy Crescenzo: Them, right? When we go into this and you kind of go, Oh man, really? Is that where we are? Yeah, it's where we Guess what? We are.
[00:31:07] You know what I love about the Catholic system? Family values, how you treat other people. Most importantly, God should be at the center. At
[00:31:19] Troy Van Vliet: the center of everything.
[00:31:20] Jimmy Crescenzo: When I go walk into a school like this, I walk, what did I see when I walked in? I parked outside in a place that I shouldn't have parked. That's East End. But anyway, I walked into the school. The very first thing I see is what?
[00:31:38] The cross. Notre Dame, same thing. I see the cross. And so if I'm doing my job right at home, that cross is gonna be front and center. I don't think God cares if I'm calling them they or them or I'm calling people by what they should
[00:31:58] Troy Van Vliet: be called.
[00:31:59] Jimmy Crescenzo: Well, yeah, I'm gonna get in trouble, but I mean this is one
[00:32:02] Troy Van Vliet: of those These are one of these free spaces, yeah, you can say whatever you want.
[00:32:07] Jimmy Crescenzo: I look back, I would have done everything way differently for me and my children. My boys said to me one day, they're 22 years old, we went out and watched his brother play in a football game in an outside league and we're walking. And he goes, Yeah, dad, you know what? I feel I got ripped off in my education. And I said to him, Wait a minute.
[00:32:29] 22, now you're telling me this? Yeah, I didn't want to bug you guys about it then. And that's when he started to tell me about all the sports. Those were important for him. Yeah.
[00:32:41] And you know what? When my kids went to school, they never came home and said, I'm super excited about this programme or I'm super inspired by this teacher.
[00:32:58] Troy Van Vliet: And
[00:33:01] Jimmy Crescenzo: it took the air out of my lungs. I'm a failure, I thought as a parent. But you know, they learn in the Catholic school system, I think. And I mean this sincerely that, Let's talk about God. Yeah.
[00:33:17] Yeah, we pray before we eat. Or my mom and dad say: Look, you know, when it's time down the road and we're talking about families and we're talking about girls that someday you're gonna want to bring home and God is front and center and should be in my home. Yeah. And you want to talk about it? Let's talk about God a bit.
[00:33:47] And so, you know, I tell you, I just think that the Catholic school system is where I would start and that's what my boys have said to me.
[00:34:01] Troy Van Vliet: That's great.
[00:34:02] Jimmy Crescenzo: Yeah.
[00:34:02] Troy Van Vliet: Well, it's great that they see that now. Now. Yeah. Is such a huge, the statistics are overwhelming in terms of the success kids have after they've graduated from a Catholic school system. It's overwhelming.
[00:34:16] Jimmy Crescenzo: Really? That's amazing.
[00:34:18] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah. And, you know, I think, and the Catholic faith that started our traditional, our school system, way we see it today, our education system, I should say, the way we see it today. And there's not enough credit given to that. I think people don't realize how fortunate we are in the Catholic community to have that. And of course we have so many non Catholics that attend our schools as well.
[00:34:42] They're all welcome. Everybody's welcome and it's impacting their lives because they're surrounded by it. And at our school, we're trying to take it to another level right now by introducing Catholic liberal education, which we were kind of talking about a little bit before the podcast and what I mean by liberal meaning freedom, free. And we're, we're, weaving the Catholic education in through all of the classes, not just in religion. Going into science that we were talking about, going into math, it's going into English, it's going into career ed, it's going into all of the different subjects so that, so it's not, you know, kids don't end up leaving school going like, oh, I don't believe in religion.
[00:35:34] I believe in science. It's like, well, no, no, no. Those go together. One of each supports each other and that's what most people don't understand, you know, in our modern world today and especially in our So secular we want to weave that into our courses as much as possible. As much as possible.
[00:35:54] Know, you're playing a game of football or, you don't go running out into the field and leave your faith behind you.
[00:36:03] Jimmy Crescenzo: No way.
[00:36:03] Troy Van Vliet: You got to take it with you wherever you're going.
[00:36:05] Jimmy Crescenzo: Absolutely.
[00:36:06] Troy Van Vliet: It's got to be, like you said, it's the number one thing.
[00:36:08] Jimmy Crescenzo: Huddle.
[00:36:09] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:10] Jimmy Crescenzo: It Come in. The end of the game, you wanna kneel and like they do in the pros. Yeah. Both teams will pull over, you know, on their knee and their football thing and they have a prayer. Yeah.
[00:36:23] You know what, I love that idea of what you're talking about because you're right, we need to do a better job of equipping our young people with this scientific support. Yeah and we talked about earlier, Father Rob at St. Mark's.
[00:36:44] Troy Van Vliet: St. Mark's,
[00:36:45] Jimmy Crescenzo: yep. He comes from a science background.
[00:36:47] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, he's a brainiac. Brainiac! Wow! But he just uses that to support the faith. Yeah.
[00:36:53] Not to cut it down, you know, or not to, discredit it. It's completely the opposite.
[00:37:01] Jimmy Crescenzo: You know what? You're giving me goosebumps. You really are because that's just fantastic. So back to
[00:37:09] Troy Van Vliet: the East End Boys Club then. Yeah. A question for you. How well do you think faith is woven into that program or is it at all or is it something that should be worked on more so? Have you been able to introduce kids that are maybe from the secular We don't have
[00:37:32] Jimmy Crescenzo: the school system holding us back. That was one thing. And then but the one thing that we have in our as far as charity goes, two things that make very clear. One, you can't do religion.
[00:37:49] Troy Van Vliet: Two,
[00:37:54] Jimmy Crescenzo: what was the other one now?
[00:37:57] Troy Van Vliet: Like you mean, because you're a registered charity, you can't talk about religion?
[00:38:02] Jimmy Crescenzo: We can't go into religion and say, we're gonna manifest or we're gonna now treat these 50 kids in a room and we're gonna talk about Jesus today.
[00:38:12] Troy Van Vliet: Right.
[00:38:13] Jimmy Crescenzo: We can do it indirectly.
[00:38:15] Troy Van Vliet: Right.
[00:38:15] Jimmy Crescenzo: Because you can't do religion, you can't do politics.
[00:38:19] Troy Van Vliet: Right.
[00:38:19] Jimmy Crescenzo: Now I had a gentleman, what's his name for the leader of the conservative party? Polya?
[00:38:25] Troy Van Vliet: Polya, yeah.
[00:38:27] Jimmy Crescenzo: So one of our boys club kids, Mauro Francis, graduated. He was a tough kid boy to teach man. Anyway, he ran for the Conservative
[00:38:40] Troy Van Vliet: Like for MP?
[00:38:42] Jimmy Crescenzo: Yep. And he didn't win because he had an incumbent in place that was a liberal and he was a very good candidate but he still got 10,000 votes. But during the thing, he phoned me up and says, Hey, I got Polyav here. Do you want me to bring him down? And then I thought, Oh, dang.
[00:39:00] How do we do this? Kid goes home and says, Today the political party came down. So I asked, you know, or so some of the people that advised me said, Listen, if you bring in him, you got to bring the Liberal guy in, then you got to bring in the NDP guy in. So now you teach it as: Here's what this party offers. Here's what this party offers.
[00:39:24] And so we couldn't bring Polyev in. So let me go back to your question.
[00:39:31] Troy Van Vliet: We had that at our parish. Sorry to interrupt.
[00:39:34] Jimmy Crescenzo: No, tell me again. Which parish?
[00:39:35] Troy Van Vliet: So at Star of the Sea, Good Shepherd in White Rock. So right before the election,
[00:39:42] Jimmy Crescenzo: he come
[00:39:42] Troy Van Vliet: in, did come It was actually Easter and he wanted to attend a mass at a big parish, you know, he's doing his tour around Canada and so he came to, he came to Good Shepherd and he attended Mass there and there's the security entourage and everything and of course it's Easter, so it's packed. And, he, at the end of Matt, he was mopped. He couldn't even get out like people were Wow. So And I was thinking to myself, because I helped quarterback get him to come in. I'm thinking to myself, how are the liberal Catholics?
[00:40:19] There's not as many, but there's, there are some here. How was that thing going go over? And sure enough, there was some, Father Augustine, he got a little bit of feedback. I
[00:40:28] Jimmy Crescenzo: bet he did.
[00:40:30] Troy Van Vliet: But, and I said, so what did you, how did you get around that? And he said, well, the liberals are invited too. If they want to come to mass, they can come to mass. Wow. Answer.
[00:40:38] And I was like, that's a good point. And just when you said that, you said you couldn't invite them because, well, all you would have had to do is send one letter to the liberal party leader and another to
[00:40:50] Jimmy Crescenzo: Yeah, the NEP right. Were invited.
[00:40:52] Troy Van Vliet: And then, yeah, we invited everybody and well, guess who showed up?
[00:40:56] Jimmy Crescenzo: Wow, well that will be the case next time. Yeah, because it has to. Yeah, it has And
[00:41:02] Troy Van Vliet: you can't.
[00:41:03] Jimmy Crescenzo: It's funny, you know, let me tell you, there's a lot of naysayers. I had a lot of difficulty in the school system because, not that I was outside the box, I was outside the box, but I gave opportunities to kids and I really wanted to stand by that. But I would be called in. I'll never forget a union meeting when I went to the meeting at lunches when the strike was going to happen. Anyway, I would always stand on the back because there's some real strong union people there.
[00:41:39] Yep. And they were, you know, we had the lady, I think it was a lady, I can't remember her name now, anyway, that represented Eastside Vancouver for the union and Vancouver Teachers Federation.
[00:41:54] Troy Van Vliet: Mhmm.
[00:41:55] Jimmy Crescenzo: And I remember one of the leaders within our school, he said, Jimmy, you know, he says at the beginning, we got started, you're not helping us, our union here. And I said, in front of everybody. Right? And they go, okay. Go ahead.
[00:42:16] I'm open to hearing what you have to say. Well, you're not helping because what you're essentially doing by raising all this money for your program, you're telling the politicians that we don't need their money because just be more like Jimmy and go out and raise the money.
[00:42:40] Troy Van Vliet: But it's true and that's what should be happening.
[00:42:43] Jimmy Crescenzo: Exactly.
[00:42:44] Troy Van Vliet: That's the way it used to be done. Yeah. We didn't rely on government social programs to bail us out of everything. No. We relied on community.
[00:42:54] Amen. The Italians, like you were supported by your greater Italian family, you know, everybody's out on their own, like community, the sense of community is lost.
[00:43:04] Jimmy Crescenzo: Oh, it's lost.
[00:43:05] Troy Van Vliet: And that's why churches, that's why so many people now are coming back to the faith. Yeah. Because they're missing. They don't know why they're, they're, they're going through life and they're just like going, you know, what's, what's happening? There's something missing.
[00:43:17] Yeah. You know, cause you can only ride on the coattails of Christianity, which this country, the West was founded on Judeo Christian values. You can only ride on the coattails of it for so long. You know, once you realize, hey, our laws, our legal system, everything, they are all based on Judeo Christian values.
[00:43:34] Jimmy Crescenzo: Amen.
[00:43:34] Troy Van Vliet: And then, but when you all of a sudden erode that away and say, we don't need religion anymore. We don't need that. Then you can say we've got our laws in place. But then people, you know, a generation or two away start thinking, well, do we have these laws anyways? Why is this like that?
[00:43:49] I don't really like that law. It doesn't make me feel good. So I'd rather just, do whatever I want all of the time. So let's abolish that law. And then we're all, and then we're surprised that we're in this mess right now.
[00:44:04] And what's happened is we've started out, we've gotten rid of religion. We've got, when that's been eroded away, the family gets eroded away. When the family gets eroded away, society gets eroded and everything goes, you know, and it's like, and here we are. And then you've got people like that that are saying, oh, well, know what, we need government money to survive. It's like, why do we need government money to survive?
[00:44:29] Jimmy Crescenzo: Get out there.
[00:44:30] Troy Van Vliet: It's the same thing as like $10 daycare. Why do we need $10 a day daycare? Our families used to be able to support ourselves. We be used able to do it on our own. Yeah.
[00:44:40] And now all of sudden, oh we need government for this, we need government for that, you know. And I always caution people when they say too, the government should pay for this. Well, means you and I are paying anyway.
[00:44:50] Jimmy Crescenzo: That's right.
[00:44:50] Troy Van Vliet: So why hand it to them to squander and like, why don't we just say, look, you keep that, we're going to do it on our own. So, and like I said, God bless you for doing what you're doing. God bless you for doing it as a charity and raising the money and it supports itself because there's enough good people out there that will support them.
[00:45:12] Jimmy Crescenzo: There are And I have a lot of Judeo Christian people that do provide us with the funds. And I said to the lady that asked that question in the union meeting and I stood up and I said, Okay, let me give you a fact. I have colleagues on the West Side that are teaching at Lord Bing and they have an amazing theater program. And there's another school that has an amazing film program. When they do a fundraiser in one night, they can raise $50,000 We did a fundraiser over two nights and we were lucky to hit $2,500
[00:45:53] Troy Van Vliet: So
[00:45:55] Jimmy Crescenzo: now I got kids in the film program that are sitting there and you got six kids sitting around one computer having to edit. Six! Wow! And I go to the school and they go, Well, unfortunately, we just everybody wants a computer somewhere. But then I said, Okay, well, forget this.
[00:46:18] I'm just gonna go and do it. And then when we got money, this is while I was teaching, when I got those funds, I went to the accounting lady, said, put these in this account. The donor would write a letter saying, he has full access to the money that we have provided. None shall be dictated by a principal or whoever it is that handles accounting. This is specifically for his program.
[00:46:51] This is how we wanna see it spent. And did that
[00:46:54] Troy Van Vliet: work?
[00:46:54] Jimmy Crescenzo: It worked. Oh, good. Oh, there were all kinds of things coming up, Wow, yeah. Yeah, people trying to knock you off, you know?
[00:47:01] Troy Van Vliet: And you got to work your way around it. And like what you said, I really respect that, you said there's a ton of great teachers and let's even say the majority in the public system.
[00:47:13] Jimmy Crescenzo: Yeah, majority in the
[00:47:15] Troy Van Vliet: public system. They've been handcuffed. They've been told they can't say this, they can't say that, they can't mention the word God. I've got a friend as a teacher in the, in the public system, that's music teacher and was written up because one of the songs, that, they were singing and being taught had the word Lord written up for that. This is the world that we live in today.
[00:47:39] Jimmy Crescenzo: Oh man.
[00:47:40] Troy Van Vliet: So, and then you're, you know, if you were to stand up and criticize it, well, and then you're being, you know, called, you know, and today you're being called every name under the book, out of the book, and it's, it's absolutely insane. Yeah, no, and the things that they're allowed to teach and the things that they're not allowed to teach. Exactly. It's like
[00:48:02] Jimmy Crescenzo: Watch a Christmas concert. Can't say Christmas.
[00:48:04] Troy Van Vliet: Can't say Christmas, no. It's like, are these decorations for?
[00:48:09] Jimmy Crescenzo: Right. It's like,
[00:48:10] Troy Van Vliet: you know, where do these decorations come from again? Where do we, I'm not allowed to say Merry Christmas but there's bows and presents and Christmas trees everywhere. But God forbid you're allowed to say Merry Christmas.
[00:48:21] Jimmy Crescenzo: And I said that to a friend of mine that
[00:48:22] Troy Van Vliet: was on
[00:48:23] Jimmy Crescenzo: staff and I said, you know what, what I think Bill, you're not a believer. Right? No. I'm not, Jimmy. I said, you're an atheist.
[00:48:29] Correct? So over Christmas break, come back to school and teach. Will you? You're not gonna be given the Christmas holiday. Exactly.
[00:48:36] Exactly. My god. Did he laugh his head off? You know, but he kept the plug, you know, but you're right. We're handcuffed.
[00:48:45] Troy Van Vliet: It's true. And that's one of the reasons why the independent school system is thriving. I love it. And it's, there's more and more and more getting there because, you know, people are coming, they're voting with their feet and they're saying, you know what, we want the independent, we're willing to pay twice because people think, people seem to think that, well you're taking money away from the public system by setting up private schools because we get 50% operational funding from the provincial government. 50%
[00:49:15] Jimmy Crescenzo: for operational,
[00:49:18] Troy Van Vliet: not for the infrastructure. Infrastructure. Like we just did $130,000,000 project building a new high school of which you get zero government Zero. So not even asking for it because the more you ask for it, then all of a sudden they put their fingers in and tell you, start telling you how to do things. So we're like, okay, you know what, we'll do it on our own, let the private system work on its own.
[00:49:41] And we've got a lot of money to raise still to help pay for this building. It's a massive, massive project.
[00:49:47] Jimmy Crescenzo: My God. And then we
[00:49:47] Troy Van Vliet: get 50% funding afterwards and yet, and our tuition fees are between 10,000 and 14,000 a year. Is that
[00:49:55] Jimmy Crescenzo: what they
[00:49:55] Troy Van Vliet: are now? So they're up there, they're getting up there. There's, I mean, it's far from the top
[00:50:00] Jimmy Crescenzo: of the heap. No, but
[00:50:01] Troy Van Vliet: we don't turn any of our families away for financial reasons.
[00:50:06] Jimmy Crescenzo: You don't?
[00:50:07] Troy Van Vliet: Nope. We raise now $200,000 a year just for our bursary program to make sure we're not turning anybody away.
[00:50:13] Jimmy Crescenzo: Oh my God.
[00:50:14] Troy Van Vliet: So families come and say, were, you know, we want to come to your school, but we just, we can't afford it.
[00:50:19] Jimmy Crescenzo: It's like,
[00:50:20] Troy Van Vliet: come anyway, let's figure it
[00:50:21] Jimmy Crescenzo: out. A beautiful,
[00:50:22] Troy Van Vliet: make an application.
[00:50:23] Jimmy Crescenzo: What a beautiful thing. Yeah, you know,
[00:50:25] Troy Van Vliet: I credit our founding principal, Ms. DeLorey for that because he said Troy, I'll help you, but on one condition, he goes, we don't turn any families away for financial reasons. Wow! I was like, okay, let's make that happen and that's in the forefront right now of our school.
[00:50:45] Jimmy Crescenzo: I got to tell you, you know, and I know the family, they're staunch educators.
[00:50:52] Troy Van Vliet: Oh, the Delorean family?
[00:50:54] Jimmy Crescenzo: Yeah, they incredible. Yeah. And so two years ago, I had a young man that showed up at one of my boys club meetings because he had heard about the program through one of his friends.
[00:51:09] Troy Van Vliet: So
[00:51:11] Jimmy Crescenzo: this kid came into the church in the basement. He was introduced by so and so. And I said, tell me about you. Where do you go to school? Said, I'm not going to school, unfortunately, because we just we took off my mom and her husband from the Czech Republic.
[00:51:28] And, know, better opportunities here, better values, school, education. I said: Oh, wow! And I said: Okay, cool. Well, what school are you going to? He says: Well, they won't let me in because I don't have all the paperwork.
[00:51:46] And I said: So what do you do all day? He said: Nothing. And I said: All day? Goes: Yeah, all day. I'm so bored.
[00:51:55] And you know, we don't have enough money to move to a place where there's better transportation, public transportation. I have to walk, I don't know what he said, forty minutes to get to a bus stop or to get to a sky train for him to come into East Van. He said it took him over an hour, And hour and a I said, well, you're welcome here. And so one of the things that happened was, I said, Well, this is ridiculous. Let me phone the school and figure out what's going on here?
[00:52:24] Why can't you let them in? And same thing came back, doesn't have the paperwork required. So we're gonna lose this kid. This is a kid that could fall by the wayside wasting time away. I went to see the principal at Notre Dame
[00:52:40] Troy Van Vliet: said to and
[00:52:42] Jimmy Crescenzo: him, Can we talk? He said, Absolutely. I said, This is what's going on. I told him. And he said, Okay, come down tomorrow at 01:00.
[00:52:52] So the mom came, the boy came and I said, This young man cannot be sitting at home, he needs to go to school. Long story short, he took him in. Yeah. We provided some money for the very first month and his uniform went to school. Wow.
[00:53:18] And how beautiful is that? That's a true story. Got goosebumps.
[00:53:23] Troy Van Vliet: Yes. You so right. Yeah. And then, it's funny, the DeLorean family, all those boys, that's what happened at St. Thomas More.
[00:53:32] I didn't know that. Didn't know. That's why one of the reasons why Mish was so adamant but about they were, they weren't a really affluent family and the parents went and, said, well, we haven't got the money to send the kids here. And they said, send them anyway. We'll take them all.
[00:53:47] And all the boys went through, you know, and look at that and then forty years, so many of them are doing Catholic Education afterwards and teaching, know, like it just had they not? Had they not? I mean incredible things happen.
[00:54:00] Jimmy Crescenzo: Great story.
[00:54:01] Troy Van Vliet: You must have some success stories from some of your, let's call them some Yeah. Of the
[00:54:09] Jimmy Crescenzo: lots.
[00:54:10] Troy Van Vliet: Have some that stand out that you think, hey, this is Well, had Bellini's.
[00:54:14] Jimmy Crescenzo: I mean, I taught both Paolo and Roberto. Did you? Yeah. And they were in Roberto was in my theater program. Uh-huh.
[00:54:24] And they said, what? Roberto? Theater? I go, Well, hang on, hang on. Because I got one of the other kids in grade 11 says, Hey, Mr.
[00:54:34] Crescenzo, you gotta take this guy. Yeah. Roberto. I said, Well, does he wanna be an actor? He goes, No, no, no, no.
[00:54:41] He says, I think it's better, can I suggest what you should do for the theatre company this year? And I said, Sure. He goes, Let him handle money, the ticket sales. And I said, Really? He's not going to be bored?
[00:54:56] No, no, he'll be fine. He just wants to be part of this whole thing. And I said, Okay. So when we do our shows, we would put all the tickets on the table and then we would say, Okay, nobody is leaving until all these tickets are gone. If you're gonna be relying on the door, people showing up buying a ticket at the door, you're gonna have 15 people in the audience.
[00:55:17] You gotta take ownership for these tickets and say, What I'm doing and who I am are worth it. So they all take their tickets. So by the end of the hour, right? They just sit there and we have a stare down. Okay, fine.
[00:55:30] Boom. They come up. So what happens is Roberto, the next day, had these business folders, ledgers. Tickets taken in, how much this kid had, you know, it was just like all done to the detail. And I looked at him and I said, Roberto, it's not good enough?
[00:55:53] I go, no, no, no, it's good enough. But like, this is crazy, man. You gave me like a real business thing. Yeah. I know Rico's got 18 tickets and he owes this You know, Ronnie gave his tickets over here, but Ronnie's still gonna come up with the money because Ronnie's gonna talk to him and make sure he sell my tickets.
[00:56:11] Yeah. And so everything was was organized beautifully. So we had an that's one. Have people in the movie industry that are doing really well. They have thriving careers.
[00:56:28] There's a young lady that came through our program. Her name was Paloma and Paloma has had a very successful career. She was cast as a 16 and a 17 year old in some major projects. She finished doing a movie with Johnny Depp. Nice.
[00:56:50] And she was in every scene with Johnny in this movie.
[00:56:55] Troy Van Vliet: Wow. Can you see the movie or no?
[00:56:57] Jimmy Crescenzo: Not allowed, yeah. But I'll tell you what, from a business standpoint, We have some young men, a guy by the name of Michael Sikich and Michael Sikich owns his own real estate company and he has, you know, like 35, 40 agents that work under him.
[00:57:18] Troy Van Vliet: So
[00:57:21] immy Crescenzo: we have people
[00:57:22] Troy Van Vliet: And would you say these boys were had they not come through this program?
[00:57:29] Jimmy Crescenzo: Where would they be today? Yeah, we've got those stories. Big time, because, you know, what we've done here is we've essentially my son one day said to me, he said, Dad, everybody asks you how you do this stuff, right? Yeah. And he goes, But I know what you do.
[00:57:49] And I go, What's that? He goes, You're basically being his dad.
[00:57:55] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah.
[00:57:58] Jimmy Crescenzo: And that's, you know, my son kind of moved me.
[00:58:03] Troy Van Vliet: Mhmm.
[00:58:04] Jimmy Crescenzo: Because they took a backseat a lot, my own children.
[00:58:08] Troy Van Vliet: Mhmm.
[00:58:09] Jimmy Crescenzo: Because they understood that my work was doing this and that it was important. And so when I look at mentors, when I come in and work with us, when we launched our girls program, you know what? At the core of their being is they want to help the student as a person first and as a student second. Let me give an example of some of this stuff. So a kid comes into my class and he's late.
[00:58:46] He hasn't been there on a regular basis.
[00:58:48] Troy Van Vliet: So
[00:58:51] Jimmy Crescenzo: the first thing that happens is he teaches you in school, so how are going discipline that? Discipline it, hey? I guess I got to phone home, tell the parent this is what's up, then go to the counselor, tell the counselor, Okay, so and so didn't come. We got to do this otherwise he's out. So then a master teacher and I had several of them would pull me aside and say, Jimmy, you're going about it the wrong way.
[00:59:22] And I go, Really? He goes, Look at the behaviour. Not there on a regular basis. Late. You don't think he's got a story?
[00:59:30] Find out the story. When the guy comes in and he knocks on the door, don't say, Look, shut the door, stand outside or go to the office. So he said, What you do is you say to him, Come in. Okay? And then you say to him, We're just working on this.
[00:59:53] It's wonderful to see you. At the end of the class, stick around for a few minutes so we can chat. So I do all that. The rest of the kids are going, When are you going to bounce on the kid? Knock them on the door.
[01:00:08] When are you going to bounce on him? And I was doing that at the very beginning until the guy pulled me aside. And sure enough, I brought that kid in, he sat down and the very first thing I said to him is what I was taught. He said to him: You know what?
[01:00:26] Troy Van Vliet: You
[01:00:27] Jimmy Crescenzo: are a very important person and there's got to be something going on in your life that's causing you to be laid and to miss. I said: That stuff don't get me wrong, it is important. But the most important thing is, is for me and you to develop a relationship where maybe I can help you with some of that stuff that's going on. If you can't tell me that now, then we'll do it in due time when you're ready. So, I'd love for you to come on a regular basis and be on time if you can.
[01:01:07] That works. Not all the time. Yeah. But now I've made an emotional connection with the kid and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him. He knows I care about him as a human being and as a person first.
[01:01:21] You have any students that have come through our program that a lot of other adults have given up on? Hundreds over the course of my career. Hundreds! Do I get it right all the time? No, I don't.
[01:01:38] But you know what? If that's my kid and he's got something going on in his life and the teacher brings him in and says exactly what I did, my young man at home, he's gonna come back and he's gonna see a good guy, he's a good teacher, cares about me and he shows up.
[01:01:56] Troy Van Vliet: And you make a difference.
[01:01:57] Jimmy Crescenzo: And you make a difference. Massive. So we've had lots of people and lots of people that have gone on to do great things in the trades.
[01:02:06] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah.
[01:02:06] Jimmy Crescenzo: You brought this up earlier and I want to do this trade story real quick. So we sat around the circle and we had, I guess it was a high Indo Canadian families at Mountain Delta when I was working up there. And we sat around Turkey and I said one day, So how many are in grade 11 and how many are grade 12s? Put up their hands and I go, Okay, listen. I want you to think for a minute and tell me, when it comes time to your future and what you want to do with your life, what are you afraid of if you are afraid of something that's gonna get in the way.
[01:02:54] So long pause, right? And you just kind of wait it out and then somebody puts up their hand and goes: I'm having a really hard time trying to convince my mom and my dad that they want me to go to university but I know there's no jobs for me when I get out. I would love to do a trade because I hear that's where the jobs are and that's where all the money is. And I looked at them and this how many feel like that? Most of the club put up their hands.
[01:03:29] So those days are gone. I mean, when I was in university at UBC, had friends in the commerce department. That's what they called it then. And at the end of the year, they had these job fairs, not downtown or hotel. In They had job fairs right at the university.
[01:03:46] And what were they doing there? They were looking for prominent people to come and get into their business and into their companies.
[01:03:53] Troy Van Vliet: That
[01:03:55] Jimmy Crescenzo: doesn't happen anymore. You better go out there and hustle. Just because you go to Sauder School of Business doesn't mean that you're going to be successful in business. No. My students that are there now, two of them, and hundreds and hundreds of applications.
[01:04:12] And both of them were taught what we talked about earlier about emotional intelligence. The importance of developing relationships, building rapport, fostering and nurturing relationships to the point where when an opening comes up, you know what? You're the man. And both of those guys have internships right now with the major accounting firm in this country. And both of them have been already scooped up and they're going to do internships with that company.
[01:04:59] Now, how could they choose you two guys out of thousands? Maybe a thousand at Soder and who knows where else? Ryan's school, Ryan Beatty School of Business. You know, Capital Analas has a really good program in the industry, in the business world and a lot! There's a lot of people, guys.
[01:05:21] How are you going to stand out and be different, sir? What I learned in the boys club, and this is the very first thing we teach them, when an adult enters the room and he's here to be a speaker, our boys stand up, They walk to them. They give them a firm handshake. They look them in the eye and say: Welcome. Thanks for being here.
[01:05:48] My name is Paul. I'm in grade 11. And then all through the thing. And everybody always says this and you can ask anybody, any of the donors, they go, You guys had me in, when you came up, you looked me in the eye and you shook my hand and it was a firm handshake. Wow!
[01:06:04] And then we talk about how do you foster and nurture relationships? We had a lady, Fiona I think is her name now and she's the president of Providence Health Care. She's got 10,000 employees. So she came in, Tom Cooper brought her in 10 employees? Oh, it's unreal.
[01:06:25] Troy Van Vliet: I didn't know that was unreal.
[01:06:26] Jimmy Crescenzo: Massive. Wow. And so she comes in with Peter Bull. Yep. Silveria, you guys might know Peter.
[01:06:34] And Tom Cooper and Peter Bull opened up, right? And he says, Hey everybody, I wanted to bring my friend in and she runs a big operation. And she's here to talk about the world that she lives in when she's not at home. And it was great because we do bring speakers in that are women. It's all good.
[01:07:04] So she came in and when she was talking to the kids about stuff, she talked about, being really good employees means this. And so a lot of our guys are going, Okay, this is the stuff that they're teaching us in a boys club. I get this. So at the end, people sort of stand up and our boys are taught to go and say thank you for a great day today. And then one of our guys, his nickname is Ricky the Bull and Ricky is maybe five feet tall, right?
[01:07:40] Ricky. Oh, I gotta tell you a story about these guys. So anyway, Ricky and all the business guys that are going into business following year, they all went up and they shook her hand again at the end. And then Ricky said to her, Yeah, hi. And he says, I know about your company because I applied for a job there.
[01:08:03] I haven't heard anything, but Yeah. Okay. So then Edward did the solo, you know, they just said, Hi, how are you? Thank you for coming and she left. So a week later, Ricky the Bull gets a phone call from the human resources person that works under Providence.
[01:08:21] Yeah. And you know what happened? This is what happened. Ricky the Bull? Yep.
[01:08:28] On the top. He got an interview, got the job.
[01:08:30] Troy Van Vliet: There you go.
[01:08:32] Jimmy Crescenzo: Little Chinese guy. And the reason I say that is because I grew up with all my Chinese friends. I don't wanna forget this story. So it's talking about building relationships and having confidence and self esteem. Yep.
[01:08:47] And with the boys, we sit there around the circle and we go, Hey, you know what? Anything, anything that you want to talk about, go for it. In here, we're gonna respect you and we're gonna love you unconditionally and we are all here to support each other. But the minute you go out that room and you say something, you are done here. That's it.
[01:09:09] You are finished. Move on. Because what says in the room stays in the room. And so we would have very fruitful and you can edit this if you want to, that's fine. But let me tell you, it's the most beautiful thing because I looked at these guys and we had 22 kids that were graduating that year from high school.
[01:09:27] And out of those 22, must have been about thirteen, fourteen, 15 kids. Okay? Yep. And those guys are all wanting to go into business or some kind of a professional career. Okay, cool.
[01:09:45] So we sit around and this is in April, May. And I said to him, Guys, this is a program that we're going to offer this summer. One of our former students who went through our program, he's now a big time director. He works in London, England and he's worked at Stratford and Shaw festivals. He got an internship at the Globe Theatre, the most prestigious Shakespeare School in the world and he was the only one that got accepted into this internship.
[01:10:15] Man, those are big numbers. You know what I mean?
[01:10:19] Troy Van Vliet: That's huge.
[01:10:20] Jimmy Crescenzo: He's coming back and he's gonna edit Macbeth. He's gonna make it so it's twenty five, maybe thirty minutes long. And all these guys were sitting in a room and I said, How about that? Are you guys who wants to do this? Two guys put up their hands, right?
[01:10:41] All the Chinese kids were sitting there going,
[01:10:43] Troy Van Vliet: And
[01:10:44] Jimmy Crescenzo: I said, Well, what? Ricky, Edward, John, say so, You know, we're in them. It's it's in the summer and you're gonna do four hours a day, two hours in the morning, lunch and another two hours, and you guys are all gonna do this this play, Shakespeare's production. And we're gonna invite people and you're gonna do it. And they just about freaked out and they go, sir.
[01:11:09] One guy said he's very funny. He says, sir, we're Asian. We don't do this kind of stuff. Said to me, right? I go, come on, tell the truth.
[01:11:16] No, sir. We're not doing drama, especially Shakespeare. I said, Well, if you want my help with scholarships, I'm gonna say you have to do this. Why would you want us to do this? Because I want you guys to get off your chair, out of your comfort zone and there's another world besides sitting behind a desk and counting.
[01:11:44] Because what you're going to learn by doing this is how you can effectively work with people that you're not afraid to go up and introduce themselves like you do here. So we did the show and they wanted to kill each other weekend. You know. They were looking at me, giving me the dirty looks every time I walked in the room. Long story short, presentation came.
[01:12:09] Yep. And all these people were sitting in a circle going, Ricky the Bulls playing Hamlet? And what about yeah. John Siso. Know, a guy never says anything?
[01:12:23] Yeah. He's got this beautiful, rich voice. And they do the show, change their lives.
[01:12:32] Troy Van Vliet: Getting people out of their comfort zone is And
[01:12:35] Jimmy Crescenzo: let's get rid of the stereotype about the Chinese kids sitting around going to do accounting classes. And I mean that in a loving way.
[01:12:44] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah. No.
[01:12:45] Jimmy Crescenzo: Fair enough. As Italians, well, for us it's like, okay, you better do it because you're gregarious and you're out there and you got lots of confidence. Yep. This guy was a little in here. I hope that you guys someday would like to do an interview with a few of those guys.
[01:13:02] Yeah. Let them tell you what happened, how they got there. Yep. Now that's not everything. But when you're writing a paper for acceptance in a particular program, one of the boys that got into solder, the very first boy, Bill Zhao.
[01:13:23] Bill Zhao's marks were anywhere in the 80s. 80 to 86. Well, they got guys like Edward Wu who got in two years later, who got in the 90s. Bill got in, Edward didn't. And I said, Why?
[01:13:46] He said, Bill said, I talked about the boys club, man. He says, I talked about what I learned, that I did the play, that I met guys like Frank Dustra and just by them showing up, it made me feel like I'm an actual somebody. That they give it, they care about me and we're worth it. And that's why when they come, that has a big time effect, you know? And if you guys need anything, Mr.
[01:14:21] Aquilini, Francesco, we do a program called Lessons in the Locker Room. You see, nobody knows not enough people know about the good things that they do, that this man does, right? Because, you know, he's a hardcore successful businessman.
[01:14:44] Troy Van Vliet: Mhmm.
[01:14:45] Jimmy Crescenzo: There's some, you know, times when you gotta play the alpha male and that's what you gotta do. But people like him, a concert comes up, if there's any tickets or suites available, they call Jimmy.
[01:15:03] Troy Van Vliet: But
[01:15:04] Jimmy Crescenzo: happens on the same day, like around noon. And then that's when you get notified. If you're lucky, you get it the day before. So they sit in a suite, there's food provided, they're watching a hockey game and they're looking down and they go, How did this happen? How did this happen?
[01:15:28] It happens but those are the good things that people do that really makes a difference. Frank Dustre, he has a passion in so many things but he's gone back to mining.
[01:15:48] Troy Van Vliet: So
[01:15:49] Jimmy Crescenzo: they were hiring a young person, you know, out of university to get a job and they'd be paid, I don't know what it was, dollars 22 or $25 an hour plus an incentive. If he signed so many people up. So what happened was his father phoned me and goes, Hey Jimmy, he says, You know what? Nathan really wanted to apply for that job that Frank Giustra's company has posted. And I said, Okay, is Frank directly involved?
[01:16:24] No. He said, There's some other guy, but I don't really know his name or anything. And I said, What's a job? Cold calling. Get on the phone and you get paid hourly and your goal is to get 100 people signed up in two weeks or a month and signed up to invest in this company.
[01:16:46] So it was too late. Apparently, they had already done the interviews And so I said, Okay, let me make a phone call. And so I phoned Frank Dustra and Frank said, What's his name? I go, Nathan Haywood. And he goes, Nathan Haywood.
[01:17:03] Okay, yeah, leave it with me. Boom, next day he got the job. Those kinds of relationships that you're developing and fostering and nurturing, those are what make it happen now. You guys know when you're fundraising, while you're sitting back in a chair at home and you're sending an email out, it's all about relationships. Know Silveria, I know you and what you guys practice, you guys have integrity and character.
[01:17:32] I want to be part of that. Otherwise, I think sometimes even in schools, in the Catholic system, sometimes what happens is people make a phone call and they make the pitch but then they never hear from them again. What happens like in my situation, a lot of people say, Well, how do you do it? What's the secret? I go, There's no secret, man.
[01:17:58] But you know what? You've got to start on day one and that is invite them into a meeting, give them the proposal. But after that, whether they give you money or not, stay in touch.
[01:18:12] Troy Van Vliet: And
[01:18:13] Jimmy Crescenzo: the kids that go to university and are getting scholarships were gifted by Corpus Christi giving us bursaries up to six students a year. Wow!
[01:18:29] Troy Van Vliet: That's huge.
[01:18:31] Jimmy Crescenzo: But guess what we teach the kids? Learn how to be grateful. What do you do? Phone Mrs. Hager and she gave the money for the scholarship.
[01:18:43] You phone her and say thank you at the beginning of the year. Then you're going to phone her at Christmas. And then you're going to phone her when you finished your first year and you're going to tell her all about the marks that you got, what you're enjoying in that corpus, which people moved you. And what we'll do is we'll get those six people, phone Judy Hager and we say we want to come over or we can go to Starbucks. So she was a huge COVID like don't come near me.
[01:19:19] But we go to her house, know, used to do is to sand on her driveway and she'd be, you know, 10 feet apart. And that's how we did it. All the kids talked about what they're doing and how they're doing and here's what I achieved. Thank you for this. So it's the number one thing that I think my mom taught me is all about gratitude and making sure that you thank people for whatever they did for you.
[01:19:43] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, big or small?
[01:19:45] Jimmy Crescenzo: Big or small.
[01:19:45] Troy Van Vliet: Thank you goes a long way.
[01:19:47] Jimmy Crescenzo: Hallelujah. Yeah. Thank you, Jesus. Praise the Lord.
[01:19:49] Troy Van Vliet: Once again, Jimmy, God Thank bless you for
[01:19:52] Jimmy Crescenzo: what you you and God bless you for what you guys do. I'm in, anything you need.
[01:19:56] Troy Van Vliet: All right.
[01:19:57] Jimmy Crescenzo: And I got to say, forget about it.
[01:20:00] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, there you go. And I love your hat too.
[01:20:03] Jimmy Crescenzo: Yeah, the hat.
[01:20:04] Troy Van Vliet: All right, thanks everybody for joining us today.
[01:20:07] Jimmy Crescenzo: Thanks That was great. You asked me something credible questions and thank you. I really, really feel good about that. Of course. What you did.
[01:20:18] Troy Van Vliet: Thanks for being here.
[01:20:19] Jimmy Crescenzo: Both of you. Forget about it. Oh!
[01:20:23] Troy Van Vliet: Thank you for listening to Catholic Education Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast on your favorite listening platform, rate it, and also leave a review. Don't forget to share this episode with your friends and family to help spread the word about the impact of Catholic education. Be sure to listen again.