One of the more tragic consequences of the changes is society over the past few decades is the dissolution of the traditional family and the lack of positive male influence with the proliferation of single-parent homes.

That’s what makes Warren Central High School teacher Thomas Mayfield’s efforts so special.

Last school year, Mayfield started G.I.V.E., Gentlemen of Intelligence, Valor and Excellence, a community service organization for young men at Warren Central. The group’s goal is to introduce its members to leaders in the community who can be role models for them, while also enabling the members to be role models for younger children in the community.

“I wanted to try to give them a way to have positive role models in school,” Mayfield said. “I noticed a lot of them didn’t have the role models they needed so we wanted to do an organization that would give them a chance to care about somebody other than themselves in the community.”

Members go to the elementary school to read to students, and have held canned food and clothing drives and worked with the United Way. This year, the members helped collect donations to assist the victims of Hurricane Harvey.

Mayfield’s efforts to help young men to improve and become role models for younger students is admirable and needs the support, not only from the school system, but also from the community as a whole, and it’s good to see that his program got its start from positive influences at home.

“I have been blessed to have a great grandfather and father who have given me the guidance to be a great man,” he said. “If I can pass on what I learned from them to these young men, that will make the world a better place.”

In a time when people are worrying whether our youth today will be able to meet the challenges of the future and there’s concern that there aren’t enough good role models for young people to emulate, Mayfield is doing more than pay lip service to the problem — he’s trying to affect a change and get young people to look differently at themselves and realize they can become better people and make a difference someone else’s life.

For that, we applaud him and his efforts to make a difference with a group of young men.