What's New?

What's New?

The Enhancement Phase of the L.E.A.D. Initiative has quickly come to an end. We managed to accomplish so much throughout the first year.

Think about it, we distributed and completed the pre-surveys to all L.E.A.D. Initiative participating sites. We held twelve Normative Education trainings, hosted four Refusal and Resistance Skills Train-the-Trainer workshops, implemented twenty four individual Refusal and Resistance Skills trainings, twelve Advocacy sessions and another twelve Philanthropy trainings. I haven’t even mentioned all the additional service projects and quarterly reporting that you all did.

This is a huge accomplishment and we couldn’t have done it without all the hard work and dedication from the L.E.AD. Initiative site coordinators and participating youth. This is the time to pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

We are very pleased and proud of all the strides that we made in the Enhancement Phase during this third Cohort. We are also really looking forward to the upcoming Expansion Phase where the youth will put all the knowledge and skills they learned from the series of PREV-CAMP trainings into practice. The youth will implementing both peer-to-peer trainings and activities.

Sincerely,

L.E.A.D. Initiative publishes article in the
Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education

The L.E.A.D. Initiative evaluation team consists of Geminus Vice President of Prevention Services, Heather McCarthy JD, Prevention program director Sherice Murff and Indiana University Northwest Evaluator Charlie Hobson., PhD. The team has been diligently working on the article since the fall of 2007 , entitled "Standardizing and Evaluating the "Presenter" Variable in the Peer vs. Adult Debate in Youth Drug Prevention Research". We are extremely excited to be published in the JADE publication and would like to thank all of our L.E.A.D. sites for all of their hard work and continued support to make this possible.

One of the goals of the research for this article was to address the unresolved debate about the relative superiority of peer vs. adult led interventions. All of the countless hours that were spent by each site to provide us with the detailed programming and community service data helped to analyze this extremely important issue. Keep up the good work and Congratulations L.E.A.D. Evaluation Team!

Leadership Development Opportunity

Congratulations to the 2008 Jack Reed Memorial Scholarship recipient, Leah Jarrett– Clark. Clark is a 2008 graduate of Richmond High School and received $2000 to further her education. She is currently attending Ivy Tech Community College where she is pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing with hopes of becoming a RN. Leah currently holds a CAN (Certified Nursing Assistant) certificate and works part-time for Arbor Trace. She was also a Jr. Staff member and LEAD Initiative member at the BGC of Wayne County Jeffers Unit, a position she maintained for nearly four years.During her five years as a member, Leah served as president of the Keystone Club at the Central Unit and Baxter Extension, participated in Kiwanis Key Club and served a s a page for Senator Allen Paul.

Congratulations Leah!