The highly successful UK Junior XC program vs. USA's nonexistantJunior XC program. Why?

In Germany there are more than 15 gliders given to junior pilots each year ranging from Libelle to Nimbus 4. Five of those are distributed on a national level. Most larger federal soaring associations also provide multiple gliders for youth promotion on a regional level. All of these gliders were privatly financed/donated at one time or another. We are not talking about state financing or our soaring association paying for everything. In most cases small clubs/trusts are founded to maintain these gliders by collecting donations and fees from supporting members. Current junior pilots take care of most maintenance work. Administration is done on an honorary basis. Former pilots chip in donations later in life when they can afford it. Whenever possible these gliders are updated to more current models, usually by collecting donations. Since gliders hardly lose value the bulk financing of a new glider can be achieved by selling the old ones. Do this steadily across more than 30 years and you see former LS1 evolve into a Discus 2ct spreading the financial burden over decades.

You are not going to copy almost a century of european gliding club culture in the States any time soon, but setting up two or three gliders for promoting junior soaring should be easy enough. A fully world championship competition ready club class glider need not cost cost more than 12k EUR in good condition with a resonable trailer (If you don't believe me, I have got one for sale). The cost of suberb instrumentation is a joke with prices of full featured variometer systems of the late nineties bottoming out and XCsoar outperforming the commercial alternatives on many details. A fully competition ready glider has never been cheaper than today.

Forget any national bodies like the SSA to take the initiative. If you want something to change then do it yourself. Find your XC enthousiastic friends, found a trust, collect donations, buy some nice club class gliders (or whatever you can afford) and find your worthy juniors to support.