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Youth program receives $175,000 grant
By Gretchen Knaup
Social Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing help for at-risk teens, received a $175,000 grant from the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health for its new "Parents Promoting Youth Development Program." The program will serve both parents and youth in the neighborhoods of Sunnyvale.
Parents Promoting Youth is the newest program at Social Advocates for Youth and will be based in the Columbia Neighborhood in Sunnyvale. The purpose of this program is to work with the parents of children ages 9 to 13.
"Studies show that this pre-adolescent phase is very crucial in their development, so we want to work with parents now, so that when they become teens, they will be making healthy choices," said Beatrix Lopez, executive director of the program. "One of the reasons we are so excited about this is because often parents get left out of the equation, so we want to include them."
According to Lopez, the program uses two methods. One aspect of the program is monthly sessions in which parents get together with facilitators to explore all the issues they are dealing with relating to their teens.
"Parents will be given support and information for services that are there to help them," Lopez said.
The other aspect of the program is the use of a full-time case manager who would work at Columbia Middle School, Bishop Elementary and Lakewood Elementary. The manager would be available to work with the parents of children that have already started to exhibit at-risk behaviors.
"She will primarily be focusing on the families so that they can turn around and help their children," Lopez said.
The program is a collaboration of the Sunnyvale School District and the Columbia Neighborhood Center.
"Without the grant from Lucile Packard, we wouldn't have been able to get the program off the ground," Lopez said.
According to Sharron Keating Beauregard, vice president and director of community programs and grants at Lucile Packard, the grant will provide the program with three-quarters of the funding for the next couple of years.
"One of our areas of focus is to promote the emotional, behavioral and mental health of pre-teens," Beauregard explained. "We try to build resiliency in kids to keep them from engaging in high-risk behaviors ... This project is a good example of a holistic approach to accomplishing that because it involves the parents and the schools.."
Social Advocates for Youth is an organization that serves teens and pre-teens primarily in Northern California. According to Lopez, Sunnyvale is one of the larger areas of service. "We offer a variety of programs for youth at risk and their families," she said.
Services include a homeless runaway shelter, called "Casa Say," in Mountain View, a counseling program, and a program for foster youth to help them live on their own at age 18.
The organization also provides an outreach education program called "Safe Place," which educates youngsters on options and services for when they are in crisis in the community and is backed up by a 24-hour crisis line. They also have an abatement program, which works with habitually truant children.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
