Yserbius123,
“different hashkafas have different things that put their teens at risk and have to put out different ways of helping them.”
I’m not sure that I agree with this – can you be more specific?
“In many MO communities, teens become too enamored with the dark sides of secular society so they have organizations like NCSY to steer them on the right path. In some communities, however, they close their ears and say “La la la can’t hear you learn more Torah!” instead of addressing the 800 pound gorilla.”
I don’t think this is true or fair. Sometimes NCSY helps a teen connect to Yiddishkeit and steer him away from trouble. Sometimes it does not. Should an outsider to the MO community then conclude from those not helped that the MO community is doing nothing to help these troubled teens? There’s some troubled teens in my community who disrupted a NCSY social party-type event to the point that they were told to leave and (allegedly) police were called. I’ve seen those same teens attending evening youth-focused learning programs offered by a local kollel and not disrupting it. I think the big difference was in the atmosphere – one was a swarm of teens plus 1 or 2 adults there to shout a dvar Torah, and one was a beis medrash with many adults and some teens mixed in attending a shiur. Is the NCSY route really superior to the derided “learn more Torah”? And as Gadolhadorah noted earlier, studies, outlets, and activities are not sufficient to really help the underlying problems these kids are having.