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OUR
MISSION |
The
Life Skills Center at Dyricon has as its mission to
develop, implement and evaluate life skill programs
for children, adolescents and adults for the purpose
of promoting health and enhancing personal development.
We use skills as the means to achieve our goals because
they are concrete, easily taught and learned, and
when directed toward areas of our everyday lives,
empower us. It includes but not limited to the following:
educating and training of Health Care Professionals,
community services, crime prevention, community development
corporation, residential rehabilitation and development,
domestic violence, parenting, rehabilitation of juvenile
offenders, drug dependency seminars. Programming will
be targeted within “ At Risk Communities,”
both domestic and foreign. |
What
Are Life Skills? |
Life
skills are often discussed but rarely defined. They
are the skills that enable us to succeed in the environments
in which we live. They can be behavioral (communicating
effectively with peers and adults) or cognitive (making
effective decisions); interpersonal (being assertive)
or intrapersonal (setting goals). Some of the environments
in which we live are families, schools, workplaces,
neighborhoods, and communities. Most individuals must
succeed in more than one environment and as one becomes
older, the number of environments in which one must
be successful increases. For example, a child need
only succeed within the family; an adolescent must
succeed within the family, at school, and in the neighborhood;
adults must succeed in the family, workplace, neighborhood,
and in the community.
Environments will vary from individual to individual,
thus the definition of what it means to succeed will
differ across individuals, as well as across environments.
However, even among different individuals there are
some basic skills that are needed to achieve success.
Furthermore, individuals in the same environment are
likely to be dissimilar from each other as a result
of the life skills they have already mastered, their
other resources, and their opportunities, real or
perceived. For this reason, programs to teach life
skills must be sensitive to developmental, environmental
and individual differences and the possibility that
the needed life skills may not be the same for individuals
of different ages, ethnic and/or racial groups, or
economic status.
While it is necessary to be sensitive to these differences,
it is also important to recognize that individuals
can often effectively apply life skills learned in
one environment to other environments as appropriate.
Many "life skill" programs seem to focus
on social competency and in teaching refusal skills.
Such approaches are incomplete and make it hard for
individuals to change. The emphasis on NO leaves very
little opportunity to know when and what to say YES
to. The focus of change is outside the individual.
We believe that the teaching process begins most successfully
by focusing on intrapersonal skills such as learning
to set goals. |
Why
We Focus on Teaching Life Skills |
Our
youth are taking more risks with their health, their
lives, and their future than ever before. Involvement
in health-compromising behaviors such as drug use,
engaging in sexual activity outside of marriage that
is often unprotected and unsafe, violent and delinquent
acts, and dropping out of school continues to increase.
The cost of these actions to our society is staggering;
not only in the present, but for years to come. Prevention
programs generally have as their goal to reduce the
incidents of the various health-compromising behaviors
by teaching what has become known as refusal skills.
What research has shown is that prevention programs
directed at youth, regardless of how effective these
programs are, never totally eliminate youth's involvement
in health- compromising behaviors.
However, the most serious problem with prevention
approaches is that they have little or nothing to
do with youth development. Adolescence is a time when
youth are seeking a sense of industry and competence.
When, and if, they learn to avoid health-compromising
behaviors, what have they learned about what to do.
We believe that a major focus for intervention programs
directed at youth should be to help them develop competence
and promote positive development. In all of our programs
this emphasis will be in the forefront--enhance competence
and positive youth development through the teaching
of life skills. |
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