3rd PROSPER Prevention Education Learning Community Meeting
January 27, 2005
10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Country Cupboard, Milton PA
Opener: Jigsaw puzzle == elements of a high performance team. A handout was distributed so teams could do this activity at a future team meeting if desired. Blank jigsaw puzzles can be ordered from www.Training_wheels.com
Discussion of Teams & Delegation
For this session, the educators organized the major tasks of their PROSPER work (identified in the last PPELC) into three areas: Core, Shared, Delegate. Surprisingly, the majority of task appeared to be shared. The “PROSPER Team Responsibility” document will be developed into a format that can be shared and discussed with PROSPER teams so that tasks can be discussed and revisions made. Core tasks will be linked to new promotion and tenure criteria when they are released by the Extension promotion committee. Chris shared the draft promotion criteria. An important core task, ensuring the quality and fidelity of the programs implementation, was discussed.
Chris present some tips about delegating and thinking how we match people’s strengths with the tasks to be completed. We agreed to come back visit this issues further in our next PPELC.
Sharing Time: What strategies have you used to in-reach within Extension?
-Share the exciting things happening with PROSPER at the county office meetings.
-Update the CED monthly about the progress in PROSPER. Sometimes share some great news (funding or a anecdotal comment from a family) with CED. This has helped with the PROSPER being recognized as a valuable county program.
-Have a PROSPER update on the agenda for the county advisory boards.
-Have a PROSPER presentation to update Extension stakeholders during the annual meeting.
-Regional presentations about PROSPER and the SFP 10-14 program.
-Apply for awards within Extension
+4-H Team Award
+PEAFCS Collaborative Award
+Program of Excellence
+NEAFCS = Florence Hall Award and the Reaching New Audience Award
Danny, Claudia, Chris volunteered to pursue applying for appropriate association awards as suggested.
-Have Daney Jackson send a PROSPER letter similar to the Dairy letter that he recently sent out.
-Create a video with family’s testimonials for marketing and impact.
-In the 3rd session of an SFP program ask participants to write down one thing that they have learned so far from this program.
-Consider cost/benefit presentation to be developed by the state office.
-May be able to begin a Share-point discussion on PROSPER.
-Used SFP Booster session in the Family Day Camp.
-Educator thinking about using parts of SFP 10-14 program in a family retreat camp.
-Challenges exist with sharing PROSPER with colleagues who are more “set-in-their ways.”
-STAY POSITIVE: that is it is important not to be negative about PROSPER with other extension colleagues and people in the community because it breads negativity towards the project.
SFP Exit Family and Youth Survey Discussion
-Use anecdotal data in combination with the quantitative data to tell a story.
- Think first about what story it is you’re trying to tell & who the audience is – use this to decide which data are most appropriate.
Ed shared his summary of SFP exit data developed using the EXCEL template. There was interest in replicating this for other sites. PCs were going to make sure that all Team Leaders had this template. Other TL’s also shared the way in which they used data, their target audiences, and their goals in sharing the data.
Sharing Time: Any new developments with sustainability or your SFP programming
Salisbury - ran one group last fall with 7 families using our match funds and approximately $1,000 they received from Market Day fundraising. They are not running groups now because they are waiting for further funding, but Denise is anticipating that they will receive $5,000 from State rep. Pat Brown, who pledged this money to them out of his discretionary funds.
Wyoming Valley West - ran 65 kids this Fall and are anticipating running another 2-3 groups this winter. They received $3,000 in donations from local businesses, and during the school report visit with the superintendent, he committed $12,000 from the school budget to support the continuation of SFP. This was largely due to everyone's excitement over the data - WVW is showing a trajectory for cohort 1 that's very consistent with an intervention effect (even though I warned them that we couldn't call it that at this point, without any comparison data).
Jim Thorpe tried to run a group last fall, but cancelled when no families attended. They are trying again this Spring and have $3,860 received from Tri-county D&A that they haven't used yet.
Bradford did not run SFP last Fall since they didn't have enough funds. They are starting this week with 3 groups and have about 18-20 families enrolled. They received $3,000 from the school district for SFP and have amassed about 14K in funding from community foundations and from the guidance center (most of it in-kind contributions of facilitator time & wages, local arranger & supervision of facilitators, etc). The new superintendent is highly supportive of PROSPER and Paul reported that she is looking into ways for the SD to absorb the costs of SFP completely.
Littlestown ran one group of 8 families last semester, mostly using in-kind contributions of facilitator wages and incentives ($2,400 - PEACE program), and meals ($900 - Cornerstone Counseling and $3,000 Lions club etc). They are currently poised to run another group.
West Perry - is running 2 groups this semester and has 14 families enrolled. They received $2,000 from the Carlisle Health & Wellness foundation and raised $350 at a silent auction during a picnic reunion for their former SFP participants.
Carbondale - is doing a tremendous job under the leadership of Karen Thomas. In the fall they ran 27 families through SFP and anticipate about 20 more this Spring. They are also actively seeking local funding in the form of grants for next year in anticipation of moving to sustainability next year.
Future Directions Discussion
-Dates schedule for future learning communities are: April 15 and July 19. The meeting will be held at the County Cupboard in Lewisburg.