CHOICES Champion

CHOICES NEWS:

The UPS Foundation has once again made a $50,000 grant to support the delivery of CHOICES to another 10,000 teens this next school year through our community partners. If you are a Chamber of Commerce, Service Club or nonprofit organization looking for a way to start CHOICES in your local schools, you may qualify to have your first year CHOICES License Fee covered by this grant, so contact us right away at info@choices.org. This is the third year in a row that UPS has maintained this level of support for CHOICES…and they did it in this economy…which brings their total support for CHOICES over the last six consecutive years to $225,000. Thank you to UPS for your incredible commitment to teens!

CHOICES MANAGEMENT TIP OF THE MONTH

School is Just Around the Corner – Time to Accelerate Your CHOICES Engine!

With many schools districts across the country beginning classes in August, and the rest starting in September, we are just a few weeks away from the beginning of the year. So in follow up to last month’s tip, here are some activities to keep your CHOICES program on track:

• Recruit new CHOICES presenters from your employee and/or membership base

• Hold new and refresher training classes for your presenters
  As school administrators and teachers return to their schools to prepare for the year, call and meet with any new schools, or new staff at schools you have served in the past, and nail down any delivery dates you still need to book or confirm

• Double check to make sure you have all the Class Kits and Presenter Kits you need for the new year, and get the materials out to your volunteer presenters 2-3 weeks ahead of their delivery dates (contact us right away if you are short on materials)

Waiting until after school has started to schedule classes often gets your timing pushed off to October, and before you know it, Thanksgiving and Winter break are looming. If you would like additional ideas on preparations for the new year, please contact your CHOICES representative or email us at info@choices.org.

CHOICES FIELD REPORT

CHOICES Experiments with Serving Home-Schooled Students

This spring Executive Director Leo Muller was invited to deliver CHOICES at the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, WA, a public school district resource for home-schooled students in the area. Not knowing what to expect, Leo was delighted to find the students very interested, highly engaged and exceptionally inquisitive. Karen Rosencrans, the Director of the center, said, “Looking forward to having you back again soon to speak to more of our adolescents. Their feedback was so amazingly positive. It was incredible to see so many young adolescents talking about and thinking about planning for their future.” She added, “My son attends school here and I'm anxious for him to hear your message.” We encourage you to offer CHOICES to the home-schooled students in your community…simply ask your public school district how to contact them.