You're going to WHAT?

I recently attended a concert featuring a couple of pretty big name bands.  It was an interesting experience, as I had not been to a concert featuring "metal" bands in quite some time.  I fully recognize that I am now firmly established as a member of the middle-aged group, but I must say that I was surprised at the number of people who expressed shock that I would be interested in seeing a live metal concert.

TDC Photography

Our concert-going party included three girls who were not quite 20 and three women who all had adult children.  I hadn't met any of the girls before, and it was obvious that they were curious about how I would handle the event.  We discussed optimal distance from the speakers and stage, watching out for concert goers who were enjoying themselves a tad too much, and the balance between staying hydrated and avoiding the porta potties.

Once in the venue, it was fascinating to see what a mix of people there were.  Plenty of young people, plenty of old, plenty of leather, and quite a few average mom types like me.  As the sun went down it was also fascinating to see how many marijuana smokers were in the audience.  I wasn't surprised to see people light up, but I was surprised to see how many were doing so.

This led, as you may guess, to something of a dilemma for me.  Working in the field of substance abuse prevention might logically preclude my standing in middle of a crowd surrounded by a haze of pot smoke.  I do not smoke marijuana myself, and would much rather that people don't use it, especially around me.  BUT, I sure do love live music.

I chose to stay, but I did do one thing that I felt was necessary to keeping my "prevention" badge.  During a break in the tunes I discussed the pot smoking with the young adults I was with.  We had a good talk about being able to have fun and enjoy the music without being stoned.  We then proceeded to dance, sing, and people-watch the night away.

We can't always escape the negative influences of this world, but we CAN discuss them with the young people who enter our lives.  Staying silent implies that we condone the behavior...staying away can leave us without the opportunity to engage with some pretty interesting young people (and the opportunity to enjoy some spectacular drum battles).

The Art of Fighting Without Fighting

This week's post was contributed by Five Town CTC Board Member, Andrew Lesmerises.

One of my all-time favorite movies is “Enter the Dragon,” starring Bruce Lee.  In this movie he’s on a boat with a group of other fighters heading to an island to compete in a martial arts tournament.  One of the competitors is going around bullying the staff on the boat and the other fighters.  He approaches Bruce and asks him, “What’s your style?”  Bruce replies with, “the art of fighting without fighting.”  When pressed to show him a bit of this style, Bruce tricks him into getting into a rowboat to go to an island where they will have more room than on the crowded boat.  Once the bully is in the rowboat, Bruce lets the line out, thereby isolating the bully from the rest of the people on the boat.  He has thus fought the bully without fighting.

At the martial arts school I run, we spend a lot of time dealing with self-protection.  In our classes we teach the “A,B,Cs of Self-Protection.”  This not only applies to bullies and abduction, but also fitness, nutrition and having a positive self-expectancy.  After all, diabetes, obesity, and depression are all very real risks for everyone.  Five Town Communities That Care also embraces the art of fighting without fighting in their work to keep the youth in our community healthy.

We teach that “A” stands for Awareness.  This is both being aware of external dangers, but also being aware of what we feel.  FTCTC uses awareness by gathering data from the youth in our community via the Maine Youth Drug And Alcohol Use Survey (MYDAUS) to find out what risks our youth are facing.  This means that they aren’t guessing or thinking; FTCTC knows the answer.

“B” stands for Boundary Setting.  In our classes students learn how to use voice and body language to keep a safe distance from dangerous situations.  For FTCTC this means that once the risks are known, they can support or implement programs that have been tested and proven (via scientific evaluation) to either lower the risk or raise protective factors that prevent the risk.

“C” stands for Core Confidence.  In our classes students learn de-escalation skills to defuse conflict or confrontation, and only if absolutely needed, the physical skills to keep themselves or loved ones safe.  FTCTC makes sure that the tested programs that they support or implement are being done properly and having the desired results.  You can go to http://www.fivetownctc.org/our-focus/problem-adolescent-behavior/ to see some of the data for our community.

FTCTC’s goal is to PREVENT the problems that face our youth rather than to fight once the youth is in the grips of the problem. That is fighting without needing to fight!

Hanging With My Heroes

This spring has been a fabulous one for me.  One of the contributing factors to the "fab" scale is that I have had an opportunity to spend some face time with the developers of the Communities That Care system.  I am always energized when I can ask questions and listen to them explain the WHY behind what we do when we use CTC to address problem adolescent behaviors.  Drs. Hawkins, Catalano, and Haggerty may not really understand just how much they have positively influenced my life, but they have.  They are heroes to me.

I respect all three of these men not only because of their contributions to our understanding of how to effectively mobilize communities to make a difference in the lives of kids, but because of their passion and dedication to it. They walk the walk.  And they challenge me to as well.

I suspect that I am not the only person out there to have more than one hero.  In fact, I have more than the three mentioned above. As I grew up in midcoast Maine and my perception of the world and my potential place in it matured, new heroes stepped in.  When I was very young my parents and other close family members made up the bulk of the list.  As a teenager several coaches and mentors joined them.  As an adult the list grew wider as professors and community activists were added.  Some people on the list are there because of their ability to support others or to parent with much more grace than I.

In all of these cases, the ability of these people to influence me hinged on one thing...our relationship.  Those who took the time to engage and challenge me have profoundly influenced who I am now.  Having someone that I respect take the time to discuss things, push my thinking, and challenge my biases is a sure-fire way to get me to examine my belief system and perhaps make a positive change.

So why am I sharing this?  Because I want you to consider that YOU are a potential hero.  Young people need heroes and mentors in many dimensions of their lives.  We cannot leave the job of creating heroes to the mass media.  Instead, we need to be brave enough to accept the idea that we can be heroes if we reach out and engage our community's youth.  You don't need to be Superman, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, or Maria Hill to be a hero.  You just need to be a caring, positive role model.  Please consider this a call to duty...will you answer?

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll!

This post was contributed by Five Town Communities That Care Development Director, Alex Owre.

For a cliché to represent the absolute in a wanton, risky lifestyle, it’s hard to beat “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” The troika conjures sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancies, squandered brain cells and overdoses, social deviants in leather pants howling at our kids to reject authority.

But one of these things is not (necessarily) like the others when it comes to promoting healthy behaviors in our children when their brains are screaming for social and emotional rewards that come at ever-greater risk. The perils of risky sex and drug use speak for themselves.

But, as the Lorax speaks for the trees, I must speak up for rock and roll.

Music is a universal language, so the saying goes. Most anyone can make music of one sort or another… especially true if the music is simple—three-chord rock and roll, anyone? And everyone has the capacity to be moved by music. It can inspire us and free us from worry. For many kids who feel they have no other social outlets, listening to or playing music connects them with their peers, gives them a sense of belonging.

Here in America we know that “it takes a village to raise a child.” As cliché as this saying has become (almost as cliché as “sex, drugs, and rock and roll),” let’s not ignore the underlying truth that when it comes to raising healthy kids, it takes a communal effort. Substitute “community” for “village” in that saying, and you have the vision of Communities That Care.

Now consider a common African saying: “A village without music is a dead village.” Almost nothing is more important to the cohesion of the village than song, a force that provides, for the individuals taking part, a sense of belonging to the whole.

At the confluence of these two “village” sayings I see a prescription for healthy communities and healthy kids: let’s encourage our children’s musical aspirations. Celebrate their musical accomplishments. Hold a garage party, and let the band play. We’ll all be better off for it.

Could have been a lost boy…….

This entry was contributed by Five Town Communities That Care Board member (and past chair), Peter Russell.

I had a visible skin rash, I never felt like I belonged with my peers, I was mercilessly bullied by 3 boys (physically) and 4 girls (verbally) from middle school through high school, academically I barely got by, and I was terribly insecure around girls and the cool kids. I found relief with a fringe group of guys that drank beer and smoked cigarettes but were exceedingly smart and articulate.

Thanks to two early mentors, one who was the technical director of our semipro church theater productions and the other my high school English teacher/drama club (including Stage Crew) director, I began to have dreams of working as a technician in professional theater, maybe even Broadway!

It would be that high school teacher that helped me to make the first steps toward my dreams.  By giving me the courage and support to NOT go to college he changed my life forever.

That teacher would also introduce me to my next mentor who started to polish my dreams into achievable goals as I worked very hard for 5 years in the film industry, a sound studio, and many summer stock and national tour productions.

Finally I was in the right place at the right time and partnered with three other men in a fledgling industry called industrial theater.  I spent the next 32 years as Production Manager, Stage Manager and Audio Engineer in what became a successful career.  Oh yes, I got to work on Broadway.

There is just no substitute for young people bonding with caring adults and those adults vesting in the future of those youngsters.

The "good 'ole days"....

This entry was contributed by Five Town CTC Board member Ed O'Brien, a Lincolnville resident and clinician at Harbor Family Services.

Some Five Town locals may know my mother, Diane O’Brien, a resident of Lincolnville for over forty years. During much of that time she has been an avid gatherer of local history; interviewing long-time residents, poring over historical documents and photographs, gathering the stories of the town that was. Since I have returned to Lincolnville and begun raising my own family, I have spent a lot of time talking with my mother in the family’s old farmhouse near the Beach. With her interest in history and my work with youth, our conversations have often focused on historical perspectives of adolescents.

As my parents could attest, I have always challenged the notion of “the good old days.” I have now lived long enough to hear my peers refer to our own upbringing in the‘70’s and ‘80s as “the good old days”- “when children had Respect.” Baloney. Every generation has had positives and negatives. When I look at the world my own children are growing up in, I see both great opportunities, and things that cause me to fear the future. Ibelieve every parent in every generation experienced the same feelings. We have the ability, however, to look at the past and learn lessons that might help youth today.

Reading the stories my mother has gathered, I do see a common theme in the families of the past. Due in a large part to necessity, youth were an integral part of the community. They were involved in all areas of the family and the community as active participants- working on the farms, taking care of younger children, making deliveries for the family business. They were visible, and adolescent culture was not as separate from adult culture. Because of this visibility, potential issues could be recognized earlier, and dealt with before a problem developed.

To me, it is not a matter of putting kids to work, or eliminating the youth culture- we have child labor laws for a reason, and adolescence is no longer simply a brief or non-existent interlude between childhood and productive adulthood. But I do see this visibility of youth in the community as something we can do a better job with. If we can find more ways to involve youth with the adult world, I think the entire community can benefit. We have some great programs for youth, but too often they turn into ways to keep youth off the streets and invisible. We need to find more ways to integrate,to recover a positive piece of the community preserved in black and white photographs.

A little history...

Previously we had promised to provide more information about the history of Five Town CTC between our start in 2003 and present day. We will pick up the story in this week's installment:

(Please read our 12/29/11 entry for the first part of the story.)

During the remainder of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004, Five Town CTC continued with a series of 7 formal training sessions in the CTC system. Five Town CTC members analyzed data, surveyed other community members, and explored potential prevention programs that had been shown to be effective at addressing what the data told us were our underlying causes of youth issues here.  In the spring of 2004, we launched our first programs. Math Mentors was aimed at reducing low commitment to school, and STAR was aimed at improving community recognition of the positive contributions our local youth make.  The additions of these programs meant hiring staff, and the size of the organization grew.

After several years of growth under the YMCA, Five Town CTC's volume of operations began putting a strain on the administrative systems, and (with the YMCA's blessing) we transitioned over to the Five Town CSD's umbrella in 2006.  Our continued growth led us to incorporate as a 501(c) 3 organization in 2007 and to step out as an independent agency in 2009.

As time went on, more programs were added to the community's suite of effective prevention strategies.  Five Town CTC provided support for implementation, training, and evaluation for such programs as Life Skills Training and the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program delivered by local school staff.  The Five Town CTC Coalition's skills and capacity to help other organizations continued to grow, and a fledgling consulting arm was born.  Consulting was provided free of charge here in the Five Towns and for a fee elsewhere.

The research into whether CTC was effective drew considerable attention when the first results (for students in the study group when they were in grade 8) were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine in September 2009.  Five Town CTC was asked to help provide a local, community perspective for media and other researchers who were curious about Communities That Care, and through this opportunity Five Town CTC was thrust into the national spotlight.  ABC news ran a piece on the efforts here and federal officials hosted a "National Town Hall meeting."  In October of 2011, a second article highlighting newly analyzed results from data on the youth participants when they were in grade 10 was also published in JAMA's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.  In between the these two publications a paper was published in Prevention Science on an independent study by Penn State researchers which found similar results from Pennsylvania groups using CTC.  A national "buzz" about CTC can now be heard and requests for consulting services related to CTC have increased.

Funding for local efforts still comes from a combination of grants, foundation support, and local donations.  The Drug Free Communities Support Program provides $125K per year to support the coalition and environmental strategies, but cannot be used to pay for direct-service programming.  This particular grant was awarded in 2008 and was for five years.  Our first round of funding will end in September of 2013; we will be eligible to compete for one additional round of funding from this source.  We had funding to support implementation of our STAR program from Maine's Juvenile Justice Advisory Group for four years, but ended in 2011.  We continue to seek grants to replace this $75K per year funding stream so that STAR can be offered again in the fall of 2012.  We are also looking to increase contributions from Five Town community members who understand the importance of supporting this work. 

Our offices have moved about the community over our eight year history—from the Penobscot Bay YMCA to a room on Washington Street, to a space-sharing arrangement with Midcoast Martial Arts, and finally to our current home at 219 Meadow Street in Rockport.  We encourage you to drop by for a visit, especially if you have any questions about where we came from or where we think we are going!  Give us a call, or take a chance and stop on by.  We would love to hear from you.