Preparations

Our project finally feels like it's coming together!  We have been kept very busy these past two weeks buying materials and meeting with academics and talking things over with the foundation.  We have now contracted a psychologist and a lawyer to give the workshops to parents and youth for the month of August.  The topics for the parents' workshops include: the psychology of violence in general; specific types of violence, their effects, and how to break the cycle; child development; addictions and their impact on violent behavior; the legal implications and resources for sexual abuse; the legal implications and resources for domestic violence; and the rights of the family.  For the youth group, the psychologist will cover sexuality instead of child development, and the lawyer will only give one session regarding the police, drugs, and domestic violence.

The workshops will be relaxed and interactive with a focus on the real-life applicability of the information and what resources are available in the community.  After each workshop we will sum up the information given in a pamphlet for the participants to keep, and there will be assessments throughout the course of the program to gauge the efficacy of the workshops.  After the pilot program ends in September, a new group of parents and youth will begin the workshops throughout the course of the school year, augmented by a few other themes.  The participants from this summer's pilot program, joined by every year's new group, will act as community ambassadors, employing the information from the workshops to their own lives as well as spreading the knowledge to their neighbors and friends in informal ways and through formal events in the schools.  

The passion we have seen from all involved to get this project off the ground has been so inspiring.  Next week we will continue with our preparations to make sure the start of the program in the first week of August will go smoothly.

Emma working on the project plan outside of our house

Annette and Emma with the university volunteers and the daycare director

Without all of their advice and support none of this would have been possible