Youth 4 Change works to prevent drug, alcohol and tobacco usage/abuse by providing curriculum, activities and interventions that increase key protective factors and reduce known risk factors that our youth encounter daily. Research suggests that the presence of protective factors in conjunction with reducing key risk factors can prevent the abuse of drug, alcohol and tobacco amongst youth.

Key PROTECTIVE FACTORS that our programming will promote are: 1) the practice of mindfulness; 2) beliefs-attitude toward substance abuse; 3) self-esteem; 4) community connectedness. 

Emmanuel's prevention programming will also work to reduce RISK FACTORS that include: 1) poor school performance; 2) anxiety-depression; 3) antisocial behavior

Emmanuel Family and Child Development Center's target service population is children that come from under-resourced families. The children enrolled at Emmanuel are often experiencing barriers that could impact their ability to be successful in Kindergarten and on their school journey. These barriers or risk factors include: single-parent households, teen or under-educated parents, residing in foster care, homelessness or housing transiency, and food insecurity.

• Approximately 60% of the children served will reside in single-parent households with three or more children.
• 88% of the children served are African American, 3% are Hispanic and 6% are Caucasian.
• 100% will qualify for the Federal Free and Reduced Lunch program.
• 50% of enrollees are birth to 3-years-old, 35% are three to four-years-old, and 15% are school ages up to 13.

Many of the children that EFCDC serves are living with chronic trauma due to extreme poverty, exposure to violence, a parent who is incarcerated, or placement in the foster care system. Because all EFCDC families struggle with poverty, they also struggle with lack of access to basic resources like healthcare, transportation, job opportunities, and stable housing. In addition, they experience persistent racial disparity and inequity within these systems.

Services & Activities

To promote the development of a mindfulness practice, EFCDC prevention programming will incorporate the use of MindUp. MindUp is a research-based curriculum featuring 15 lessons using the latest information about the brain to dramatically improve behavior and learning for youth. Each lesson offers strategies to help youth focus their attention, improve their self-regulation skills, build resilience to stress, and develop a positive mind-set in both school and life. 

To help increase self-esteem and reduce the presence of anxiety-depression, COMBAT funded programming will include mental health focused activities that include group therapy, psycho-educational groups and individual counseling. Therapeutic groups will be facilitated using the Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT) model. The over-arching goal of these groups will be to help student participants find the language and knowledge needed to address their trauma, speak about it, and understand how it affects decision-making, and long-term health and wellness outcomes.

Psycho-Educational are facilitated both in after-school and summer school programming.

Locations

Click on the window icon (upper right corner) of the map below to expand. List of all program locations is included with expanded view of map. Locations are also listed on this page below the map.