Television viewers across America united to watch the season premier of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on Septermber 26.  Here is the link to the episode:
 http://abc.go.com/watch/extreme-makeover-home-edition/SH559052/VD5587918/boys-hope-girls-hope-part-1
It was a special two part premier that focused on Boys Hope Girls Hope, an organization that provides young scholars with tools to gain an education.  The young scholars are nominated by school officials: they are academically talented and they live in government funded projects.  Boys Hope Girls Hope provides lodging to these students, but until Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The girls of the organization did not have the lodging the boys did.  Because of this, the boys of the organization nominated the girls for a spot on the show. 

As always, the premier was emotional.  The woman who runs the organization emotionally described the importance of making a difference in the lives of these young people.  These strong emotions make it difficult to step outside of the feel-good factor of the show to look at it critically, but I am about to try.  In the past, the show has visited families who have substandard living conditions and this time, they visited a group home for bright young women in tough neighborhoods.  While I cannot argue that this is a beautiful idea, I find it problematic that celebrities are called in to these neighborhoods to fix the problem.  To me, it sends the message that the way out of poverty and homelessness is through celebrity involvement.  Certainly, government organizations have not done the trick (take a look at the projects from which these students come).  But I wonder whether it is troublesome to send the message that it takes a famous person to initiate this type of community improvement (while community members are active in the makeover process, it takes the endorsement of the show to get this done.)  Is it ok to send Ty Pennington into these situations as the universal Mr. Fixit?  Or is this distracting from the actual problem i.e. the reason tough neighborhoods and substandard housing exist?  Or does this strip agency from these communities by sending the message that this home building project could not have happened without the help of the rich and famous?  One thing I know for certain is that after the construction, the communities from which the young women of Boys Hope Girls Hope came still exist.  There are still US communities that stifle the development of US America's youth.  Now I wonder how that can be fixed.