I met with a friend to discuss our structure and grant opportunities. We?re looking at 3 major areas:
1.
Our own Center<
2.
Internship / Job / Community Service Program
3.
Education and Community Outreach
Our facility will be designed to accommodate administrative functions as well as
operations. The primary purpose of
the center is to provide a safe, functional environment that is culturally
attractive to today?s youth ? an ever-changing target.
Uses include
·
Host 12 Step Recovery Meetings
·
Host Coffee House / Community Drop in Center
·
Clean and Sober activities:
o
Recovery Jams, Music workshops, recording, etc.
o
Film Festivals, Videographer Workshops, etc.
o
Art Exhibits, Various Media Workshops,
o
Readings / Poetry
·
Karaoke
·
Hub for ?Field Trips? White Water Rafting, Snow
Boarding, Dr. Bob?s, Founders Day, Conferences, etc.
·
PJ Parties / Lock-ins
·
Athletics: Softball, Flag Football, Volley Ball,
Golf League, Kite Flying, etc.
·
Conduct Training; Continuing Education,
Adolescent Specific, Community Education, Guest Speakers
·
Internship / Job program / Community service
opportunities
·
House Administrative Office(s)
Internship /Job program / Community Service
This is a huge gap, especially among juvenile offenders and addicts. Summer is especially troublesome
because of downtime. Providing kids
with doable, tangible, and meaningful tasks allows them an opportunity to
explore vocational options, develop skills and experience accomplishment. Our Center itself will require
staffing; especially our start up phase.
Internal (at the Center) opportunities for the program include:
·
Start up
o
Renovation Planning
o
Interior Design
o
Construction Labor
o
?Apprentice? Level Trades
·
Operations (sustainable)
o
Customer Service (Coffee Shop)
o
Event planning / Organizing
o
Event hosting, DJ, Open Mic, Emcee, etc.
o
Cleaning
o
Light Maintenance; mowing, painting
External opportunities for the program include:
Establish collaborations with
businesses and professions around Lake County to provide youth the opportunity
to:
·
Teach
something to someone else (contribute to society)
·
Have an
internship to gain exposure to a profession of interest/mentoring
- Have
opportunity for ?employment ?
The goal is to:
-
Nurture good work habits and social skills
-
Build self esteem
-
Raise vocational sights
The collaboration has something that
also benefits the company, business:
- Good
business exposure
- Good
corporate citizens
-
Investment in future workers and stronger community
-
Accomplish something they wanted to do but did not have the volunteer
staff/intern to do this
Education and Community Outreach
While education is not a solution it is invaluable to recovery, serving the
recovering, and understanding the recovering community. Even experienced recovering sponsors
might benefit by learning some of the idiosyncrasies of teenagers, and
especially teens with seriously affected development problems / disorders. There are clinical aspects of teen
addiction that are not commonly known or understood, or regrettably, even
acknowledged by the recovering community; and legal ramifications as well. On the other hand, judges,
counselors, religious leaders, law enforcement specialists, and other community
service providers cannot be expected to know and understand the intimacies of
the recovering community (and addiction for that matter). SaveMyKid.org can help fill this
specialized gap:
Education for the Recovering Community:
·
Obviously this is NOT a CE market or profit
driven process. These course are
designed to help recovering mentors / sponsors gain knowledge about youth as
well as some of the developmental, social and legal ramifications teen
addiction.
Education for the General Community:
·
Legal Community: Law enforcement, courts systems
and legal representatives could all benefit from gaining a more in-depth
viewpoint about youth and addiction.
These courses could be presented as classroom and/or web based. (Legal CLE are
approved by the Ohio Supreme Court.)
·
Clergy: Non CE courses ? The spiritual malady and
the recovering community approach
·
Counseling Professionals: Accepted CE
o
Insight into the recovering community
o
Establishing recovering social networks
Expand Next Step:
The Lake County Juvenile Court, through their drug court, the Achievement Program,
contracts (including financial agreement) with SaveMyKid for Next Step services. We are currently considering offering
the Next Step to other facilities.
We do NOT compete with any treatment provider because WE DO NOT provide
treatment! (For an old description
of Next Step, see the Next Step tab at
www.savemykid.org )
Current Next Step core volunteers are, Jen Krupa, Joe Craig, Brett Gideon, Nick
Sekura, Nick Zale, and Neal Britton.
Core volunteers bring in local recovering chair people (monthly) who in turn
bring in local guest speakers / moderators (weekly).
We anticipate requesting funding to hire a coordinator who will expand the Next
Step program to a 4 county area: Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, and Lake. We anticipate that local treatment
providers will appreciate the value of this program, but probably will not want
to pay for it because it is non-clinical, therefore, non-billable to insurance. But that won?t stop us from asking
and trying. Either way, if we get a
paid staffer to coordinate this, we will probably not continue to use Next Step
incoming revenue to fund other activities.
Scholarships and Activities
Currently, proceeds from the court are used to fund or partially fund
activities, scholarships, etc. like:
·
Refreshments for Next Step
·
The Joanna Britton Scholarship ($200) to offset
transportation costs of one of the AP activities for one of the girls (this was
most likely misspent ? the girl?s dad stopped taking her)
·
$40 for work shoes for one of our volunteers (to
save her job)
·
$120 for the group campsite at the Spring
Punderson conference
·
$100 for a group of young people to attend the MI
CAAMPOUT
·
$500 for a group of volunteers and an AP girl to
attend the OYPAA conference
·
Seed money for the Recovery Jams
Where to go from here
OK. That?s all good, but it?s time to get more sophisticated, better organized
and start looking at the future to fill more gaps and provide a better range of
service and opportunities ? these kids need action more than lectures
Action Items
1.
Looking at Jackson Street site
2.
Develop timelines and benchmarks
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