Kids at Hope Youth Academy

The Kids at Hope Youth Academy involves college students mentoring high school students with specific challenges. The challenges might be the home environment, or limited English language challenges for foreign exchange students. The Kids at Hope Youth Academy works in conjunction with the Greater Albion College Access Network (see sidebar at right: College Students as Mentors for At-Risk Youth

Cross-Age Mentoring Program (CAMP)

In considering the key takeaways from the research on this program that other mentoring programs can apply to their work, it’s useful to reflect on the features and practices that might have influenced its rating as “Promising” (that is, a program that shows some evidence that it achieves justice-related goals when implemented with fidelity).

Across Ages

Description

Across Ages is a mentoring initiative targeting youth 9 to 13 years of age. It includes four components: (1) elders mentoring youth, (2) youth performing community service, (3) youth participating in a life skills/problem-solving curriculum, and (4) monthly activities for family members. Across Ages can be implemented as a school-based or after-school program. Targeted youth reside in communities with no opportunities for positive free-time activities and few positive adult role models; may be in kinship care due to inability of birth parents to care for them, often because of incarceration or substance use; and have poor school performance and attendance.

Goal / Mission

The goal of this program is to enhance the resiliency of children in order to promote positive development and prevent them from engaging in high-risk behaviors such as substance use, early sexual activity, or violence.

The Positive Action® System

The Positive Action program is a whole system with a comprehensive set of integrated and interactive components. Program materials contained in toolkits are easy-to-use and serve the school, family, and community. All the components coordinate around a universal theme, or philosophy, and they can stand alone, fit together seamlessly into any configuration, or work as a whole. These components work together as a powerful, coherent approach to affecting change in the whole school community and/or its parts. When used as stand-alone materials, they are able to target specific areas within the school, family, and community to provide further flexibility within the system. Having a working knowledge of the Positive Action System as a comprehensive set of components is important to designing a customized Positive Action program that is appropriate for your short- and long-term needs and goals.

Positive Action Mission Statement

The mission of the Positive Action System is to promote positive actions in individuals, schools, families, and communities, which empowers their greatness and creates a happy, healthy society.

Vision

To create a society that is positive, respectful, safe, and civil for everyone.

Project Towards No Drug Abuse (TND)

A classroom-based drug prevention program designed for at-risk youth that aims to prevent teen drinking, smoking, marijuana, and other hard drug use.
Project Towards No Drug Abuse (TND) is a drug prevention program for high school youth who are at risk for drug use and violence-related behavior. The current version of the Project TND curriculum contains twelve 40-minute interactive sessions taught by teachers or health educators over a 3-week period. Sessions provide instruction in motivation activities to not use drugs; skills in self-control, communication, and resource acquisition; and decision-making strategies. The program is delivered universally and has been used in both traditional and alternative, high-risk high schools.
Classroom management in Project TND involves development of positive norms of classroom behavior. Although interaction among the youth is encouraged, the course is primarily teacher-directed and highly structured. In Project TND, the teacher’s role is to actively develop and maintain peer group support in the class by modeling support, positively reinforcing it among group members, and negatively reinforcing deviant peer bonds and activities. The teacher creates and structures interactions among youth in prosocial directions.

SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER EDUCATION/PREVENTION

Programs

COMMUNITY THAT CARES, COMMUNITY COALITIONS AND TASK FORCES

Provides a broad active voice for substance abuse concerns and issues, enhances public awareness of programs and services, and addresses system changes with a vision of collaboration, coordination, and inclusive participation needed to assure effective and efficient service delivery

POSITIVE ACTION AND HEALTHY FUTURES/SAFETY FIRST

Offers a drug prevention curriculum for middle school students, which dramatically reduces both the onset and regular use of substances. Focuses on substances that adolescents are most likely to use alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, and inhalants. Guided classroom discussion and small group activities stimulate peer interaction and challenge student beliefs and perceptions. Homework assignments also involve parents by facilitating parent-child discussions of drugs and how to resist using them.

ADULT/CHILD MENTORING PROGRAMS

Offers a high school and middle school mentoring program. Participating students are trained as peer mentors and provided with skills and materials to deliver a drug and violence resistance educational program for middle school classes. In addition to learning drug and violence resistance skills, the community service component promotes the concept of volunteerism and provides ongoing opportunities for middle and high school student to work together.