Friday, September 18, 2009
Agency gets grants for youth programs
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JoAnne Poindexter
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More than 200 Roanoke students in four after-school programs will participate in a character-building program through two grants recently awarded to Family Service of Roanoke Valley.
Family Service is one of 37 Virginia agencies that received grants under the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Fund, a division of the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth. It received $42,389 to cover the costs of training, staffing and materials for the Positive Action program, which reinforces appropriate behaviors.
That program has been touted for its approach to the reduction of problem behaviors such as cigarette smoking and aggression among children and youth by the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices, according to a Family Service news release.
Under the grant, about 100 students at the West End Center and 45 students at the Presbyterian Community Center are receiving weekly lessons on building positive relationships with peers and family, developing behaviors that will help them avoid substance abuse and violence, and learning good academic and nutrition habits.
The second grant of $48,549 from the Governor's Office for Substance Abuse Prevention expands Positive Action to reach 40 students at the Boys and Girls Club and 30 students enrolled in a YMCA-sponsored after-school program at High Street Baptist Church.
The program teaches the positive psychology of life through games with a purpose where students get to choose their behaviors, said Cheri Hartman, Family Service's director of youth development.
"It's really about positive youth development outcomes," she said.
Positive Action is very structured and has materials appropriate for children in ages from kindergarten to 12th grade, Hartman said. It also involves parents by offering parenting activities during the school year.
Parents, she said, will be able to reinforce positive behaviors after their children have completed the program.
The program is being offered to after-school programs to avoid competing with Standards of Learning lessons and being squeezed out by other in-school projects, Hartman said.
Family Service of Roanoke Valley, which offers a number of services to strengthen families and the community, applied for the grant in response to a 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted in Roanoke.
The survey revealed that 63 percent of middle school students reported being in a physical fight, 16 percent had consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, 18 percent had used marijuana and 4.9 percent had used cocaine.
A recent study sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that Positive Action has had a significant influence on preventing problem behaviors in fifth-graders who participated in the prevention program for one to four years.
Those students were about half as likely to engage in substance abuse, violent behavior or sexual activity as those who did not take part in the program, according to a news release from Hartman.
Positive Action has been used in more than 13,000 schools nationally and internationally for more than 26 years.
