Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower International

Our 'Bullying Prevention and Positive Peer Interaction Skill Building Program' represents a unique and innovative way of addressing insidious negative behaviors such as bullying, harassment, shunning, coercion, and other forms of emotional and physical violence and abuse among youth in schools. Designed in response to and in collaboration with educators and parents at Washington Elementary School in Richmond, its purpose is to help youth forge new patterns in social interaction; promote healthy life styles and choices; and overcome other barriers in reaching their highest social, physical, intellectual and emotional potential by building their positive peer interaction and boundary-setting skills consistently throughout ALL K-6 grade levels. Research has shown that equipping children with these potentially life-changing ?People Safety? skills proactively as part of the elementary school?s lower grade curriculum, rather than waiting until they enter middle or high school, has the potential for the greatest impact!

The impact of KIDPOWER programs can be immense and lead to long term changes in a child, family or social group, and the community at large such as: an increase of safe, secure and inclusive learning environments to meet children's social and emotional needs leading to increased readiness to learn; an increase of safe, healthy emotional relationships between children, their peers, family members, caregivers, teachers, and program staff; an increase of protection against domestic, school, and community violence and abuse; and a decrease of the effects of people's disabilities on their ability to reach their full potential.

The purpose of the proposed 'Earliest Teachable Moment' program is to provide disadvantaged children in the Bay area, ages 3 and up, with opportunities to realize their highest social, physical, intellectual and emotional potential; and to recognize the primacy of parents and educators as the most important and influential teachers in this regard. The program represents a unique and innovative way of addressing self-esteem, self-confidence, self-advocacy, and physical and emotional safety issues potentially blocking children from succeeding and thriving in school and life. It deals with the potentially crippling effects bullying, harassment, violence, and abuse can have on children's health, social, and academic skill development. The program emphasizes experiential, success-based practice of prevention and intervention techniques. We give children and youth the opportunity to apply empowerment, self-advocacy, health, and safety concepts and turn them into skills through role-plays in a safe, anxiety-reducing, competence-building way that is age- and ability-appropriate and culturally sensitive. In addition, where (pre)schools and youth organizations have a structure for parent involvement, the program includes Parent Education or Joint Parent-Child Safety Trainings specifically to strengthen the parental/guardian role in dealing with children's empowerment and self-protection issues. In order to build capacity and foster long-term sustainable change, the program focuses on professional training coupled with individualized follow-up coaching of education and youth development staff in how to teach core Kidpower skills on their own and how to incorporate them into their curriculum in an ongoing way, using our bilingual (English/Spanish) cartoon-illustrated Teaching Kits. By investing in the training and coaching of caregivers, teachers and program staff, the beneficiaries - children and youth - not only get reinforcement in applying these life skills throughout their whole educational pathway, but the schools and support agencies become independent of Kidpower in teaching those skills. Once part of a curriculum or agency's standard practices, Kidpower training becomes WIDELY and EQUITABLY accessible to children year after year without additional cost. As an additional benefit, our cartoon-illustrated bilingual safety curriculum has been recognized and utilized as an excellent early literacy program.

Towards this goal, the following project activities were developed for this program: Provide at-risk children and youth with self-advocacy, violence and abuse prevention training, equipping them with the tools to keep themselves emotionally and physically safe and reducing their risk of being exploited or (re)victimized. Participants will practice simple, age- and ability-appropriate techniques for detecting and deterring potential harassment, violence and abuse from strangers, bullies, peers, and people they know and trust. <br /> Where (pre) schools and organizations have a structure for parent involvement, provide (foster)families with Parent Education or Joint Parent-Child Safety Training specifically to strengthen the parental/guardian role in dealing with children's empowerment and self-protection issues. <br /> In order to achieve long-term sustainability, provide teachers and human services program staff with in-service trainings and individualized follow-up coaching on how to teach Kidpower skills on their own including how to incorporate them into their curriculum or organization?s standard practices in an ongoing way using our bilingual (English/Spanish) cartoon-illustrated Teaching Kits. We start with discussing with teachers and program staff how they can maximize the impact of the trainings with children in their care, and what level of coaching they may need personally in order to feel confident enough to start practicing skills with their students. One of the obstacles/challenges we have discovered is that, unlike anything else these professionals teach, personal safety skills are difficult for many of them to demonstrate effectively themselves because of their own issues with the subject manner. We observe what works for them in terms of getting them to actually practice the skills with their students and build the skill level from there. As part of these trainings, we work jointly with the staff in preparing tailored lesson plans; show them by example how to teach the skills by training their students while they watch; have them practice the skills with their students or clients on their own; and continue to build their skill level until they feel confident enough to practice all the skills with their students or clients on an ongoing basis.

The purpose of this combined initiative is to help people of all ages coping with special life challenges such as being visually or hearing impaired, physically disabled or developmentally delayed as well as women and children living in violent family settings, survivors of domestic violence, abuse or assault, and women and children at high-risk of victimization such as homeless women, teenage mothers, inner-city teens, foster kids, and very young children, overcome a major barrier to physical and emotional health.; and to support the primacy of education, health and social services professionals as their most important and influential teachers in this regard The program aims to protect people with disabilities and women and children who have been victims of violence and abuse from being revictimized, and to prevent others at-risk but not yet victimized from suffering violence and abuse in the first place by providing them with tools and skills that have demonstrated performance and effectiveness in keeping them emotionally and physically safe. The program emphasizes experiential, success-based practice of prevention techniques. We give people with disabilities and domestic violence victims the opportunity to apply empowerment, self-advocacy, and personal safety concepts and turn them into skills through role-plays in a safe, anxiety-reducing, competence-building way that is age-, gender-, and ability-appropriate and culturally sensitive. In addition, where organizations have a structure for caregiver involvement, the program includes Caregiver Education or Joint Caregiver-Child classes specifically to strengthen the (foster)parent/guardian role in dealing with young children's empowerment and self-protection issues. Last, but not least, in order to achieve long-term sustainability, we provide health, education and social services staff serving people with a wide variety of physical and developmental disabilities and domestic violence program staff, with in-service professional trainings and individualized follow-up coaching on how to teach core Kidpower skills on their own and how to incorporate them into their curricula or standard practices on an ongoing basis.

Funds will be used specifically to provide people with disabilities and victims of domestic violence with the tools to: keep themselves emotionally and physically safe; reduce their risk of becoming a victim of violence, abuse and exploitation, and increase their self-advocacy skills and self-esteem and self-confidence necessary to perform optimally in the community and life. The skills taught will be individually-tailored to the unique situation and ability of each person being trained including physical and developmental limitations, broken down in small steps, incrementally increased, repeated and practices until integrated. <br /> - Provide direct service staff and professional staff from health and social services agencies working with people with disabilities and victims of domestic violence with in-service trainings and individualized follow-up coaching on how to teach core Kidpower skills on their own including how to incorporate them into their curriculum and organization?s standard practices on an ongoing basis using our bilingual (English/Spanish) cartoon-illustrated Teaching Kits.

Our 'Creating Cultures of Caring, Respect and Safety For All' initiative provides a comprehensive range of services to prepare schools and health and human services agencies to integrate personal safety skills and concepts into their ongoing programs in a sustainable way.

To incorporate our success-based self-advocacy and emotional and physical safety skill building trainings in a sustainable and systemic way into the curricula and standard practices of a wide representation of early childhood education programs, schools, and health, education and human services agencies serving low-income and Spanish-speaking children and youth in the Pajaro and Salinas Valley areas; as well as in the support structure teachers, program staff, caregivers, (foster) parents and guardians provide for these individuals.

Our 'Reaching Out to the Two-Thirds World' initiative prepares professionals from NGOs in developing countries on how to adapt the Kidpower system of teaching personal safety skills to help prevent violence and abuse against young people who are living and/or working on the street, who are being exploited because of economic vulnerability, or whose communities have been disrupted by war or natural disaster.

Young people who are living and/or working on the street, who are being exploited because of economic vulnerability, or whose communities have been disrupted by war or natural disaster.