Ottauquechee Community Partnership

Youth-Led Community Dialogue May 18th

2011-05-17T11:08:00.001-07:00

By Jackie Fischer

“What do you have to say?” “We all have something to learn, we all have something to give.” “Community gets built when people show up.” These are phrases youth facilitators use to describe the Youth-Led Community Dialogues.

The Dialogues bring people of all ages together to listen carefully to one another, and for each to express one’s own experience through a safe and respectful structured dialogue process. OCP and partners, youth and adult, have used the Community Dialogue process throughout the last couple of years to discuss important issues facing our community. The specific topics are carefully chosen by youth facilitators. On May 18^th the Community Dialogue topic is: Public Spaces in Woodstock: How Welcome Do You Feel?

The Community Dialogue is being sponsored by OCP and the Youth Matter Community Collaborative, a group that focuses on increasing youth connectedness to community. A strong asset of the Woodstock community is that people tend to pay attention when youth take an active role in leadership around a community issue and invite people to dialogue about an important question. Giving youth an active role in leadership in the community is an important way to connect youth to community.

“There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about” writes Margaret Wheatley, author of Turning to One Another, stressing another important role of dialogue in the community. Community Dialogues are based on the premise that the very best way to address an important issue is to encourage people to talk openly about it. Addressing the questions around use of public spaces is not a simple matter, but the Dialogue will focus on “what’s possible” rather than “what’s wrong.” Wheatley makes the point that the simple act of bringing people together to dialogue enhances community building. She writes, “As we share our different human experiences, we discover a sense of unity. We remember we are part of a bigger whole…we also discover our collective wisdom. We suddenly see how wise we can be together.”

Youth leadership, community engagement, important topics addressed in deeply respectful way - this is what Community Dialogue is all about. Add your voice to the Dialogue on May 18^th in the North Universalist Chapel Society Social Hall in Woodstock from 6:30-8:30. With questions, call OCP at 457-2679.

Community Coalition Topic on May 10th is “Parenting”

2011-05-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

By Jackie Fischer

How fitting that Mother’s Day, high school graduation, senior prom and Father’s Day all fall within a month’s time of each other. The rituals celebrating high school completion and new opportunities are bookended by days honoring mothers and fathers, the most important people in supporting children’s optimal development. But how and where do parents get the support they need? We’ll talk about that at the upcoming Community Coalition meeting, on May 10^th from 5-7 p.m. at the Woodstock Union Middle/High School library. Parents of children of all ages are invited to attend – to share parenting joys and challenges, and to learn more about great local resources available to parents.

Parenting challenges abound! One example is in the transition from 6^th to 7^th grade. Many sixth grade children relish leaving their small town elementary schools, to go off to the seventh grade in the big middle school in town. But parents of children in the sending towns of Barnard, Bridgewater, Reading and Pomfret are sometimes less than keen about the idea. Often parents lament that once their children move into 7^th grade they often know less about their child’s friends, and have less connection with other parents and with the school.

The WUMS Parent Network is trying to change that sense of parent disconnectedness. The Network is led by a handful of parents with support from principal Dana Peterson, counseling staff at WUMS and OCP. The Parent Network provides an opportunity for parents to dialogue about the concerns and achievements with raising children and challenges with raising children in our media saturated culture. The Parent Network describes the importance of their work: “Involvement with your child’s school and education is important to the health and well-being of your teen. We’re only parents of middle schoolers for a short time (although these two years may seem to last a lifetime.) The Parent Network aims to be a resource, a home to school connector, a source of information and a gathering of parents to address the small and large questions of and about parenting.” Second Mondays for Parents are workshops based on specific parenting topics. Last year’s included: Cyberbullying, the Adolescent Brain and Talking about Healthy Relationships.

Other supports for parents locally include the parenting series Guiding Good Choices and LifeSkills for Parents. Offered through OCP in towns throughout the district, the five session Guiding Good Choices is a program that provides parents with the knowledge and skills needed to guide their children through early adolescence. It seeks to strengthen and clarify family expectations for behaviors, enhance the conditions that build assets within the family and teach skills that help children resist peer pressure.

LifeSkills for Parents is a parenting program stemming from Botvin's LifeSkills Training, the substance abuse and violence prevention program taught to 6th - 9th grade students throughout the district. Jason Tarleton, middle school health teacher, teaches the parent portion of the curriculum. This training familiarizes parents with the LifeSkills curriculum that their children are receiving in school, and teaches skills for reinforcing lessons at home that children are learning in schools.

Join the discussion about parenting at the Community Coalition meeting on May 10, from 5-7 p.m.

Youth Get Involved With Retail Alcohol, Tobacco Training

2011-04-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

By James B. Grossman
OCP Outreach Coordinator

Recently five young people from Woodstock Union High School welcomed 34 retail clerks from 10 local stores to a Department of Liquor Control training co-sponsored by the Ottauqueechee Community Partnership (OCP). The youth represented the Spectrum Teen Board, VTLSP (Vermont Teen Leadership Program), and OVX (Our Voices Exposed).
You might wonder why youth would be involved with retail training. These young people wanted to thank and recognize clerks from retail stores that help keep our community safe by not selling alcohol and tobacco to underage purchasers. For retail clerks to know that they are appreciated is important. For youth to know that they have a voice and their feelings and opinions are taken seriously is critical. As we prepare youth to enter the adult world, practicing civic engagement is critical in raising aware and active citizens. Fostering working bonds between youth and adults helps create not only a community, but also a safer community for all. Spectrum and VTLSP also used the opportunity to continue the youth/retailer partnership, telling the stores about their upcoming Sticker Shock campaign. The project entails placing stickers on alcoholic beverages and putting up posters. These stickers will display warnings such as “distributing alcohol to minors can leave you with a $10,000 fine and 5 years in jail” etc. The teens will design both the stickers as well as the posters that will be displayed. The certificates given to retailers who passed all compliance checks for the past two years stated “Congratulations on passing DLC compliance checks in 2010. Thank you for keeping Vermont youth safe by limiting alcohol and tobacco sales to adults, thereby reducing delinquency, DWI’s and car crashes from alcohol and reducing youth smoking.”
This year the businesses that received the recognition are:
Mac’s Market, Woodstock, Downers Market, Downers 4 Corners, South Royalton Market, Randolph Smart Shop, Champlain Farms, The Pit Stop, Pittsfield, Cumberland Farms, Woodstock and Windsor, and the Woodstock Inn Gift Shop.
Certificates were presented by Marissa Farbman and Stephanie Stanglin from VTLSP, and Indi Bjornsson, Tabitha Coleman and Sam Clement from the Spectrum Teen Board. Sam Clement then presented to the group about the upcoming Sticker Shock initiative that the two groups will be working on with OCP this year.
The training was led by Steve Waldo, who gave tips to the sellers on how to identify underage purchasers. “Most customers just walk into a store and go right for what they want to buy, but someone who’s underage might circle around a bit, looking to see if there are any adults they know and looking for the cheapest beer,” said Steve Waldo, trainer for the Department of Liquor training. Waldo a captivating presenter, with more than 25 years of experience in enforcement and education, explained the liability of sellers and reviewing different sales scenarios. He educated clerks about how to reading ID’s and offering a host of “trick” questions to verify that the identification truly belongs to the presenter.
Concerned youth, committed retailers and a lively speaker made this required state training an interesting and fun evening reflecting positive community spirit. We would like to give thanks to Matteo Bjornsson who photographed this event. For more information on future trainings and other community events, contact the Ottauquechee Community Partnership at 457-2679.

Making Healthy Local Food Easy to Find

2011-03-22T07:45:00.001-07:00

By Jackie Fischer

Do you love to garden, and want to share your love of gardening with children? Are you a food producer who is looking for more ways to market your product locally? Are you interested in finding a way to bring good local food into your workplace, for meetings and breaks? Would you like to work with others to make fresh produce available in schools?

Eating local healthy food makes sense for individual good health, plus it makes sense for growing our local economy. It is a simple enough idea – connecting good food to people who want to eat it. But even the simplest ideas are often complex to carry out. Sustainable Woodstock’s Nick Mahood and OCP’s Jackie Fischer have been thinking about ways to strengthen the local food system, and we recently decided to establish a Local Healthy Food Council to facilitate this process. We invite you to join us in a conversation about it on April 12^th. The goal of the Council will be to make the healthy choice the easy choice, by increasing access to local healthy food and by connecting local food producers and consumers in schools, stores, and in the community at large.

If this is a topic that interests you, the next Community Coalition meeting is the place for you. Join us on Tuesday, April 12^th from 5-7 p.m. at Woodstock Elementary School for what’s sure to be an interesting and productive conversation. Participants should each bring a local healthy treat to share, making for a tasty conversation, too!

Youth-led COMMUNITY DIALOGUES: “What do you have to say?”

2011-03-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

By Jackie Fischer

The term ‘civil discourse’ has been pulled out, brushed off, and bandied about quite a bit in the last few months. But what does the phrase really mean? And more importantly, how does it apply to our everyday lives here in the greater Woodstock area? Over the past couple of years, OCP and partners have sponsored three sets of Community Dialogues, and we are gearing up for another series. These youth-facilitated events bring people together across the generations to consider real issues and concerns. We often find through the dialogue process that youth and adults share the same concerns. During Community Dialogues, people answer thoughtfully poised questions from the heart, across generations, and are carefully listened to by one another. This is civil discourse at its best.

Community Dialogues are led by youth facilitators with adult support, and, over the last two years, they have been held in Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Pomfret, Reading, and Woodstock. Each Community Dialogue addresses a particular issue, carefully chosen ahead of time by the facilitators. Every participant in Community Dialogues has a chance to meaningfully reflect on the topic and to have their voices heard and respected.

Youth and adult Community Dialogue facilitators receive specific training in how to lead and focus the dialogues. During the training process, facilitators learn active listening skills and techniques for making sure that all voices are heard.

OCP and partners are now preparing for the next set of Community Dialogues by holding free facilitator trainings for both youth and adults. These trainings will be conducted by Robert Bryant on March 20 and 27^th from 1-3 p.m. for youth, and from 12-3 for adults. OCP and partners are actively seeking both youth and adults who would like to become trained facilitators. Call us now if you are interested!

There are a couple of ways you can be involved in supporting Community Dialogues. One way is to become a trained Community Dialogue facilitator or encourage a young person you know to become a trained facilitator. It’s fun, and facilitators gain great communication skills. Or, you can participate in an upcoming Community Dialogue. Showing up to a Community Dialogue is a good way to make your voice heard in our community and to support youth involvement in community. Watch this column for upcoming Community Dialogue dates!

If you or someone you know is interested in becoming a Community Dialogue facilitator, especially young people ages 14-17, contact Jackie at OCP at 457-2679 or jfischer@ocpvt.org This Community Dialogue training is made possible by funding from the Ottauquechee Health Foundation.

Who Has the Power to Create Welcoming, Safe Communities?

2011-02-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

By Jackie Fischer

Bullying. Harassment. Sexual violence. We too frequently read or hear these violent phrases linked with children and incidents in our communities and schools. These are serious problems; but, there is a solution to them: create an intentionally welcoming environment in which people of all ages feel valued and safe.

We don’t often stop to define qualities of welcoming environments and healthy relationships. The cornerstones of healthy relationships - good communication skills, empathy, and responsibility - need to be fostered as critical skills and modeled throughout the community. A number of Woodstock initiatives are putting these skills to work and are making a difference in our schools and community. A few examples include:

Woodstock Healthy Teens, an OCP and Wise of the Upper Valley project, is working with high school staff to conduct trainings focused on supporting good communication skills, empathy, and responsibility. They believe that these messages begin to develop in school, and need to be echoed throughout the community in order to provide a consistent and common message – and an explicit expectation of healthy relationships.
SOS Peer Counseling at the WUHS is a well-established high school peer-to-peer counseling group. SOS teens respectfully and non-judgmentally support their peers, through one-on-one conversations in school settings, thereby modeling healthy relationship behavior.
Stand Up! is an experiential and interactive anti-bullying program at Woodstock Union Middle School designed to encourage empathy and accountability. Students are empowered to self-reflect and hold themselves accountable for their impact on their community. They challenge themselves and fellow students to take responsibility for creating their community. The program is designed to empower students to stand up for themselves and others.
The Youth Matter Community Collaborative works to create and support opportunities for young people to build relationships through community and civic engagement. OCP is one of the community partners of Youth Matter.
The Woodstock Taskforce Against Domestic and Sexual Violence has the mission to engage all ages as catalysts in the community in order to transform attitudes and behaviors through understanding of domestic and sexual violence. The aim is to educate and raise awareness of domestic and sexual violence; create a comprehensive community response; and promote healthy and respectful relationships.

These are only a few examples; there are other community and school groups that are intentionally nurturing healthy relationship skills. If you know of one, or are involved with one, I’d love to hear from you about it. It’s the sort of good news that we can all use a little more of. My email is jfischer@ocpvt.org and OCP’s phone number is 457-2679

In a time when children and young people are overexposed to interpersonal violence at every turn, in the news, in video games and movies, on television, even through music, it is more important than ever for friends, teachers, neighbors, parents to take time to model healthy, caring relationships. Small actions can serve as a powerful balance, rather like an antidote, to the messages from our violence-saturated culture. We can all learn from these community and school initiatives. Stand Up! Each one of us can, together, build healthy relationships and a strong thriving community.

Partnerships in Action

2011-02-10T15:23:00.000-08:00

By Jackie Fischer

I welcome the Vermont Standard’s invitation to write a column to report on Ottauquechee Community Partnership’s (OCP) community contribution. Because OCP is involved with so many community projects and initiatives, OCP may mean different things to different people. OCP’s vision statement reflects our work: Our welcoming communities thrive through strong partnerships and positive intergenerational relationships.

You may know of OCP through the Community Coalition, the WUMS Parent Network or through a parenting course. Perhaps you know of OCP’s projects with young people through youth groups – the Community Dialogues, Generations Together, Vermont Kids Against Tobacco, Students Against Destructive Decisions or through the Youth Activists’ YRBS survey analysis.

One of OCP’s most long lived programs, one that we think is critically important, is OCP’s mentoring program – the local mentoring program. OCP’s Shining Light Mentoring Program has for over ten years connected local middle and high school youth to positive community adults. New programs being launched this year include Lunch Buddies at Reading Elementary and Bridgewater Village School.

We are only one of multiple partners in many projects which are vital collaborations with schools and community organizations. Projects like the Healthy Eating Active Living initiative, Trek to Taste, Farm to School, Walk Wednesdays, Prescription Walking and the Walking School Bus all focus on the common goal of promoting health through healthy eating and active living. The Woodstock Healthy Teens project focuses on developing healthy relationships to prevent sexual violence. OCP is one partner in the dynamic Youth Matter Community Collaborative that works to create and support opportunities for young people to build relationships through community and civic engagement.

OCP applies research and guidance from national best practices and the Vermont Department of Health in ways that best fit local culture, conditions, and applications. A couple of examples of these include developing Smoke Free Zones and the Healthy Stores Initiative.

This wide array of projects may seem disparate and disconnected, but they all have common themes throughout that, taken together, are of critical importance to community health and well-being.

These include:

· Support young people as catalysts for change

· Promote healthy choices

· Empower youth and families

· Support intergenerational communication

· Increase community connectedness and

· Engage in inclusive and diverse collaborations

Our work is only possible through strong community partnerships; as such, OCP builds relationships and bridges to work with community partners to realize these themes. To accurately reflect our community work, this column may also serve as an avenue to hear from some of our valued community Partners.

Our goal for Partnerships in Action is to explore with Vermont Standard readers why the work is important and how it all relates to creating strong, vital communities. If you have comments or questions about OCP’s work, or would like to become involved in a particular project, I’d love to hear from you! You can call OCP at 457-2679, email me at jfischer@ocpvt.org or stop by our office on the river level of the Ottauquechee Health Center.