Nearly 20 local at-risk youths hand-picked from the recently graduated fifth-grade classes at Congin and Canal schools are going Full Tilt this summer.
The students are enrolled in a new summer program, funded wth leftover DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) money, spearheaded by Westbrook Police Chief Paul McCarthy.
With professional mentors, Thursday adventures and Friday community service, the youngsters are getting lessons on how to be good decision makers and successful young adults through the Full Tilt program. It began Monday at the Mission Possible Teen Center.
“It’s going great,” Rickie Bogle, program coordinator at the teen center, said on Tuesday. Bogle said the group is gearing up for bowling at Colonial Lanes on Thursday and will being doing a cleanup along the Riverwalk on Friday.
“The goal is to reach out to young people and give them something to do over the summer that’s meaningful,” said Bruce Dyer, a substance abuse counselor at Westbrook High School and member of the community-based Mentoring Workgroup that helped build the program. Dyer said a key, and novel, part of the program is the use of professional, adult mentors.
“The chief thought this was a major priority,” Dyer said.
The adult mentors – two-thirds of whom are coming through a program partnership with JobsinME.com, a workplace recruitment Web site based in Westbrook, and the rest from the broader community – are meeting the kids on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday during their lunch breaks.
“It’s refreshing to see corporate support for a program like this,”
said McCarthy.
The program, which McCarthy describes as a “resiliency, anti-crime, anti-drug program,” begins at 11 a.m. (“We figured most teens don’t like to get out of bed in the morning, and we accommodated that,” said McCarthy) and runs until 5 p.m. five days a week through Aug. 17. McCarthy said the kids will cruise on Casco Bay, take a trip to Fun Town, get life-skills training and interact with the mentors.
“I’ve seen very good results from mentoring programs,” McCarthy said. “While not problem free, (the youths) tend to be better at decision making.”
The Westbrook City Council authorized on Monday night McCarthy’s request to expend leftover money from a DARE donation funds account that has been ldormant since the program ended in Westbrook two years ago. The officer in charge of the program resigned from the position, and the chief was unable to find someone to fill the role.
There was just under $8,000 in the account, but the total summer program is costing more than $20,000, with much of the rest of the costs picked up by in-kind services and the Mission Possible Teen Center.
McCarthy said there are a number of grants being applied for to fund future programs. He said he hopes the years to come will see more funding and will be able to accommodate more youth.
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