SEYMOUR JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. – Lt. Col. David Moeller and Capt. Joseph Stenger pose in front of the 335th Flagship F-15E Strike Eagle after its maiden flight with heritage patches here July 19, 2011. Air Combat Command officials approved the patches to be displayed until May 2012. Moeller, 335th FS commander, hails from Moreno Valley, Calif., and Stenger, 335th FS pilot, is a native of Barnsville, Ohio. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Rae Perry/RELEASED)

By JANELL HUNTER

Times Leader Staff Writer

BARNESVILLE — U.S. Air Force Maj. Joseph Stenger, a native of Barnesville, was one of 60 people honored Thursday in Dallas by former Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for their participation in and graduation from the Presidential Leadership Scholars program.

The program brings together leaders from across the non-profit, military, public and private sector fields to learn leadership lessons first-hand from the four presidencies of the Bushes, Clinton and Lyndon B. Johnson through their presidential libraries.

During the program, participants worked on personal leadership projects that “change lives by focusing on a new or existing civically relevant initiative.”

“We want people from all walks of life and different political persuasions,” President George W. Bush said of the program in a press release. “We want people who have shown the capacity to succeed. People who work hard, and who work with others in a good way.”

Stenger is the co-founder of Flying Scarfs, an organization that works to employ widows in Afghanistan to allow them to be able to educate their children and prevent them from joining the insurgency. Stenger and his co-founders, also members of the U.S. Air Force, were deployed in Afghanistan in 2011, and found that insurgent groups there preyed on children who were forced to beg on the streets of Kabul. Those children were desperate and in many cases were responsible for caring for their widowed mothers and younger siblings. They learned that extremist groups offered the children money for their loyalty and service. The men decided to find a solution to the problem by employing parents and keeping the kids in school and off the streets. The men began helping the widows sell scarves they made online and sending the money back to their families.

“We decided our legacy in Afghanistan would not be defined solely by violence,” Stenger said.

Since 2011, Flying Scarfs has raised nearly $200,000 for widows in Afganistan. The organization employs 60 women and 75 percent of their children are in school.

“We can’t quantify how many of them would have been recruited by insurgents if their mothers weren’t employed, but we’re certain that our business saved at least some from the clutches of extremism,” the group states on its website, www.flyingscarfs.com. “Our work is far from over. There are a lot of challenges in importing scarves from Afghanistan, but our motivation is higher than it was when we first started. We still need customers to buy scarves, spread the word, and champion our cause.”

According to the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the Presidential Leadership Program selects participants who have a wide variety of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences and “who will most benefit from a dynamic learning experience that stresses the importance of cooperation and collaboration … rather than always reaching consensus, we need to learn to disagree in a clean and respectful way.”

Program participants are chosen through an application process that determines their “leadership growth potential and the strength of their personal leadership projects. These projects are aimed at improving the civic or social good by addressing a problem or need in a community, profession or organization.”

During the six-month program, scholars learn four core leadership skills — vision and communication, decision making, persuasion and influence and strategic partnerships. The participants are enouraged to form “meaningful relationships with one another and to learn from each other’s divergent views and backgrounds.”

At the graduation ceremony Thursday, Clinton and George W. Bush both emphasized the need for political and social groups to unite to find common ground and the need to foster leadership to solve problems that affect everyone.

The two former presidents have developed a friendship since thier terms in office, with Bush referring to Clinton as his “brother from another mother.”

“One of the things that’s wrong with American today, that bothers me more than anything else about our future, is that we have separated ourselves into like-minded communities,” Clinton said.

Stenger completed the program with a group that included a member of the Open Society Foundation, a Coca-Cola Co. executive, a YouTube executive, a Harvard University fellow, a Hospital director of social impact, the CEO of a non-profit that provides low-cost computers to those in need, a city attorney, a chief of police, and head of a preparatory school.