North County News–
The Alliance For Safe Kids, a local nonprofit organization geared toward protecting and educating the community’s youth, plans to keep busy in February by screening two informational documentaries, distributing a student survey and co-sponsoring workshops for teens and adults, all free to the public.
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 9, the Alliance For Safe Kids (ASK) will show “Race to Nowhere,” Vicki Abeles’ award-winning documentary about issues affecting today’s student population in the United States.
Over 400 people have registered for the event and ASK is requesting that people who attend the screening jot down their thoughts and share them with the alliance staff during the group’s next coalition meeting March 1.
While attending the coalition meeting is voluntary, it will provide a forum to share information about the movie with other community members, as well as sharing new ideas, rather than simply watching with no discussion, coalition coordinator Lisa Tomeny said.
The alliance is also working with the Parents for Lakeland organization to host a film about teen dating violence and abuses, created by a Hendrick Hudson School District teacher and his students.
The film will be shown at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 16, in the Lakeland High School auditorium and community members are invited to attend.
To get a better idea of what Yorktown kids are dealing with these days, the alliance is distributing a survey, to be completed anonymously, to all eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders in the community by mid-February.
The survey examines behaviors and attitudes, assesses the types of environments teens perceive themselves to be in and it asks questions, Tomeny said. For instance, one question might ask about the number of cigarettes a person has smoked a cigarette within the past 30 days.
“For coalitions like ourselves, this is a pretty important tool to develop what programs we bring into the community, what trends we see and what factors we need to address environmentally,” Tomeny said. “This is in terms of our own specific community, specific to Yorktown, as opposed to some national data or study.”
Bach Harrison, LLC, of Salt Lake City, Utah, a survey research and evaluation service provider, handles the calculations and returns the results to ASK within a few months, Tomeny said. Those results will not only provide the alliance with an idea of what kids in town are doing, but what direction the coalition will want to go in regarding its programming.
The end of the month culminates with a weekend event geared to help parents and teens. From 3-6 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 27, at the Yorktown Stage and Yorktown Community and Cultural Center, the alliance will co-sponsor “Save A Life,” a program intended to empower the community in the wake of young lives lost throughout town.
The Yorktown Interfaith Ministerial Association is spearheading the event, which feels a community forum was needed to address local teen deaths over the last few years, Tomeny said.
“Part of the effort is to help parents see when things are wrong but more importantly, for teens to have the tools to know what they’re looking for or who they can go to for help,” Tomeny said. “This is a proactive approach and a community effort.”
Jan Cheripko will be the event’s keynote speaker for adults. Cheripko, an instructor at the Family Foundation School in Hancock, N.Y., a college preparatory school for at-risk teens, also wrote “Imitate the Tiger,” a book about teen alcoholism.
Adults will have an opportunity at the event to listen to a number of panel speakers discuss topics ranging from suicide and bullying prevention to drug and alcohol abuse and family intervention. Panel speakers include the Yorktown Police Department members, Lakeland Central School District staff, and representatives from the Northern Westchester Women’s Shelter, the Cortlandt Manor Teen Center and more.
Teens will have an opportunity to choose two out of four workshops to attend that deal with partying too hard, suicide, being in an abusive relationship and being bullied. Each workshop has its own facilitators and students who attend the Save A Life program are eligible to earn three hours of community service credit and a signed certificate.