Young people in urban populations are often confronted with a variety of negative issues; among them are gang violence, drugs, poverty, peer pressure, low self esteem, lack of family structure and moral discipline. This is a growing problem resulting in increasing pressure to find ways to prevent young people who care and program designed to instill pride, discipline and a personal winning attitude can abate these issues and motivate families and communities.

Team SWAT is a national karate team comprised of students from martial arts classes.

Roger Haines, a police office for the City of Woodlawn in Ohio, uses his spare time to mentor at-risk youth as the head of his own multi-faceted martial arts program. Haines, a Tenth degree black belt, with a Ph.D. in Martial Arts Philosophy and an inductee into the Eastern USA International Black Belt Hall of Fame. He has been teaching Tang Soo Do and Tae Kwon Do for thirty-eight years.

He is also President and CEO of the National Tang Soo Do Federation, Inc. [International], as well as the head of the Midwestern headquarters of the Korean World Martial Arts Union. He has been working with at-risk youth for over thirty-two years, in an effort to stem the tide of youth violence.

Through innovative programs like SWAT [Special Winning Attitudes Team] created in July of 1995, Haines brings various age groups of inner city youth together to cooperate as a traveling karate team. Haines has introduced these underserved youth to practically every state in the union through Martial Arts tournaments. The children get to broaden their horizons through visits all over the country, to experience sights they would never ordinally see in their daily lives.

These meet news friends from the back-roads to the farmlands to the major metropolitan centers in all four corners of the nation. Nationally, they build comraderie. Locally, they learn discipline, teamwork, character-building, values and ethics.

Haines strives to support the cornerstone of our society, the family, by providing strong models for our children. Along with Martial Arts, he teaches life lessons, encouraging the children to stay away from drugs and alcohol.

Roger Haines stresses that the break down of the American Nuclear Family is the primary reason for the up surge in youth violence. "With either mom or dad missing from the family these days...through the need to work to support the family or through divorce, whatever reason, the children are lost and are need of sructure and guidance. We provide positive male role models, father figures, to teach these children old-fashioned morality, core values, and a sense of community."

"Through cooperative efforts with a mixture of powerful individuals, community leaders and civic organizations, we provide the village what it takes to raise a child. One child at a time."

"We teach our kids to focus on their goals. Believe and Achieve," Haines preaches. SWAT, for example, they all work together to achieve a goal. They train together. They support one another together. They WIN together."

The classes provide training on combat home invasion, traditional Karate classes, self defense programs, rape prevention and awareness, defense tactics, surviving terrorism, and child abduction prevention. They also provide physical training; teaching discipline, anger management, values, character and instill self esteem. The mission of the organization is that of education, recreation, community service through instruction of the martial arts.