Programs to teach life skills

 

The Life Skills Center has developed a number of programs to teach life skills. A brief description of each program follows. Click on any of the programs below to get more information on it. The downloads require Adobe Acrobat Reader.

GOAL Program

The Going for the Goal Program (GOAL) is the Center's largest and best-known program. GOAL is the 1996 winner of the Lela Rowland Prevention Award given by the National Mental Health Association. It has also been honored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of its Freedom from Fear Campaign and received an honorable mention by the Points of Light Foundation.

Samples:

GOAL -- Program Information

GOAL -- Leader Workshop

GOAL -- Student Workshop

 

SUPER

SUPER (Sports United to Promote Education and Recreation) is a series of sports-based life skills programs. With all of the pressures on schools to improve the academic performance of its students, many schools seem to be ignoring students' social and personal development despite research that suggests that changes in students' personal behavior are likely to affect their academic performance. Because of the decision made by many schools to eliminate or de-emphasize non-academic programs, the Center has developed after-school life skills programming.

Samples:

SUPER -- Program Information

SUPER -- Leader Workshop

SUPER -- Student Workshop

 

ARTS

(Description & samples coming soon)

 

GOALS FOR HEALTH

Goals for Health (GFH) was a five-year, $2.8 million grant awarded to the Life Skills Center by the National Cancer Institute. GFH tested the utility of adapting and using a variation of the GOAL Program to deliver cancer-preventing messages and reduce cancer-promoting behaviors in sixth and seventh graders in over 25 counties in rural Virginia and rural New York. As part of the intervention, animated videos were developed. In addition to developing and implementing the program, we conducted, and still are conducting, extensive research on the program's effectiveness.

 

BRIDGE

The Center has developed a genealogy and health program, A Bridge to Better Health (BRIDGE). The program is designed to teach participants to become their family's health historian as a means of sensitizing them to their own health risks, particularly breast and testicular cancer. We believe that knowing one's family health history can influence participants' health and become an empowering life skill.

Samples:

Bridge -- Program Information

 

LIFT

LIFT, Living Free of Tobacco, (formally called the Virginia Tobacco Prevention Program - VTPP) was initially funded by the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation and implemented in several school and after-school sites in Virginia. The program consists of six peer-led workshops taught to sixth and seventh grade students. The peer leaders are high school age students from the same communities. The workshops focus on: goal setting, peer pressure, the influence of advertising and the media, social support, the long- and short-term consequences of tobacco use, and the history of tobacco in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Samples:

Living Free of Tobacco -- Program Information

Living Free of Tobacco -- Leader Workshop