By living in an interconnected world it is nearly impossible to ignore the repercussions our actions can have. However, with dedication, support and a positive attitude, repercussions can turn into positive outcomes that can change lives and global economics. A study done in 2012 by the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto further explains the value youth can have on the system.

The study considered the impact of a dollar invested in the kids.now mentoring program today and its long-term contribution to society through enhanced employment prospects and productivity of program participants as well as reduced costs to society in such areas as the justice, welfare and health systems as a result of anticipated positive lifestyle choices.  Preliminary findings projected an SROI range of $10 to $14 for each dollar invested in the program.

A whole is the sum of it’s parts and the most important parts are our kids. This is why we are focused on mentoring kids now, so that before they make bad choices, kids are equipped with life-success skills that will help them choose right in order to contribute to their growth and benefit the whole community. You too can impact the long-term productivity of communities by supporting the kids now program and helping more kids receive the tools and neccessary life-success skills that make a difference and shapes tomorrow’s leaders.

As an organization, our long term goal is to be able to reach 10,000 kids by 2015 and be able to provide them with social skills that not only improve their ability to relate with others but also help elevate all other learnings. Research shows that teaching our kids to know their strengths, weaknesses, talents and by encouraging them to believe
in their abilities can have a greater impact on their life success than by just pushing them to get high grades.

With the skills fostered in the kids now program, kids are better suited to face any situation, look at the positive and create solutions. In the end, the results are happier people.

In August 2009, I traveled to Vietnam to volunteer at orphanages working with kids with disabilities. When I returned home, I shared my experience with a former colleague who was involved with kids now at the time. After hearing about my time in Vietnam, she asked me to come and share my story with the kids – I did and the kids were in awe. The stories put things into perspective for many of them, and I realized then that I too could have an impact by becoming a mentor.

Each time I sat down with the kids , I was simply inspired. Watching the kids grow and develop over a three month period was truly remarkable. Some kids from being shy, timid individuals became outspoken and confident warriors ready to take on the world. The kids now program teaches children valuable lessons and skills they may not learn from school or at home. It gives kids the opportunity to feel empowered and increases their self-confidence to make smart decisions now and in the future.

A student’s parent called the teacher to tell her how she has seen her son’s behavior change dramatically over the past few months. She noticed he became much more talkative and expressive at home especially at the dinner table. The kidsnow program encouraged him to be more confident and taught him the importance of communication and how to express his feelings.

kids now program gives students the opportunity to be creative, think outside the box and discuss ideas that sometimes are restricted during school hours. Kids look forward to the after school program and it is even considered FUN, something they look forward to weekly. This is evident in the card image below where students thanked me for “making Thursday’s fun.”

The following article was published in the National Post on Thursday, January 19, 2012.

—-

In our ever-connected digital world children today find themselves under more social pressure than ever before, while at the same time they are faced with making defining life choices at increasingly younger ages.

It was the recognition that children are bombarded with life-altering choices well before their high schools years that prompted educator Janet King to create national youth charity kids.now more than a decade ago.

Established to provide free after-school/in-school group mentoring programs to grade 7 and 8 students, kids. now is designed to encourage young people to believe in themselves to make positive choices that help them reach their full potential.

Based upon the concept of “emotional intelligence” or the ability to use emotions effectively and productively, the 12week kids.now program focuses on five key elements deemed critical to success in school and life in general: self-esteem, goal setting, communication, conflict resolution and stress management.

Research on the importance of developing emotional intelligence had first been done on adults and Ms. King was the first to hit upon the idea that a mentoring program based on those principles would best serve children in the pivotal years of grades 7 and 8.

“It is a critical age when kids are so influenced by their peers and they are having such challenges in how to fit in,” says Ms. King, the group’s founder and president. “When kids are feeling good about themselves they are going to want to fit in with a better crowd. When they are not feeling good about themselves then they don’t have the confidence about themselves, and the chances of being sucked up into a gang or a group that is going nowhere are that much greater.”

Those middle school years are also the time when children make choices that will affect their adult lives. “Kids are deciding in grades 7 and 8 if they want to go to university and graduate from university. So give that kid the skills to make the right choices” before they go down the wrong path such as taking drugs or joining a gang,” Ms. King says.

kids.now has run more than 1,000 programs across Canada, helping more than 11,000 young people, and it currently runs more than 230 programs serving about 2,300 children in Ontario, Alberta and New Brunswick.

The importance of social emotional learning/life-success skills provided by kids.now has a prominent backer in Joshua Freedman, chief operating officer of California-based Six Seconds, an organization that provides emotional intelligence training programs to children and adults.

“I used to be a middle school teacher so I know that it is an extremely volatile time for kids,” he says.

The pressures on middle graders are far higher than on their parents given the influence of the Internet and alwayson social media, Mr. Freedman says. For their parents, the high point of social pressure might have been a single event such as their first school dance. “I would say that is their lives 18 hours a day, because of the prevalence of social media.”

That two-year “pressure cooker” mixing biology and technology is also “a time that so much of their personality will be defined, so these skills are not optional,” Mr. Freedman adds.

The benefits of the emotional intelligence skills that his organization and kids.now teaches are measureable. In the United States, children who are in schools with social/emotional programs score 10% higher on SAT tests, for example. “They do better [academically] and we waste less resources, we spend less time on discipline issues. It is kind of a no-brainer when you look at it that way.”

Rich Lash, a director of management consulting firm Hay Group and emotional intelligence expert , has trained kids. now staff and is a strong supporter of the program. “I think it is very valuable and it is wonderful work that [Ms. King] is doing. “I think that is a wonderful opportunity for these kids at this young age to get exposed to positions of leadership and to understand concepts that most adults don’t even get to experience,” Mr. Lash says.

He points to the famous “marshmallow” delayed gratification test whereby researchers presented children with the option of eating one marshmallow immediately or waiting a period of time and be allowed to eat two of the treats.

“One of the hallmarks of effective leaders is the ability to subordinate your own needs and desires for the good of others or the good of the group as a whole, which is a very difficult thing for children – even adults – to be able to do,” Mr. Lash says. “The ability to delay gratification is a huge predictor in peoples’ overall success in life.”

“Giving that to children early in life is absolutely essential, but it also gives them a lifetime to practice it and reap the benefits of it.”

View feature article layout in National Post.

The following article was published in the National Post on Thursday, January 19, 2012.

—-

A participant in the inaugural kids.now mentoring session in 1999, Carey Escoffery traces much of his academic and career success to kids.now.

“One of the things you are going to get at school is the technical know-how but the program prepares you for the softer side of things, such as relationship-building,” says Mr. Escoffery, 27, who grew up in Toronto’s notorious JaneFinch area and is now an analyst with BMO Financial in Toronto.

“That is probably the most important thing that I walked away with,” he adds. “How to speak to people, your temperament, and how to deal with people. Those are skills that are extremely important for anything that you are going to do but I can’t remember any [academic] course that I have taken that focused on those soft skills.”

Not only did kids.now give the University of Toronto graduate key relationship skills, it also armed him a set of with goal-setting skills “that was huge” and what he calls “forward thinking” abilities.

“When you are in grade 1 and 2, you know exactly what you want to do: You want to be an astronaut or you want to be a firefighter. As you get older it starts to fade away and you are not really thinking about what comes next.”

After taking the kids.now program, Mr. Escoffery was sure he would have a career in computers and he pursued it in his first year of university before switching to a commerce and finance degree.

“I found the one that really fit my personality and my skill set and, yes, that foundation was really set much earlier on.”

kids.now, which is promoting the national Mentor Youth Day on Jan. 25, also has a positive influence on the volunteer mentors who lead the 12-week programs.

“It has been really rewarding for me to see them have a goal and put that goal out and have a way to achieve it,” says Amanda Oreto, a fourth-year McMaster University student in the midst of mentoring a group of middle-school students, and who hopes to become a teacher after graduation this year.

“kids.now started off as a way for me to get back involved with my community, something I had lost touch with after university. I loved the idea of kids having access to a program that addressed issues at a time when they needed it the most,” says Arjun Saraf, a kids.now coach mentor at Meadowvale Public School in Mississauga, Ont., in the fall of 2010 and currently the controller at New Haven Mortgage. “The focus on aspects such as leadership, guidance and self-esteem really helps, and as a coach mentor I saw this with my own eyes. My favourite part – as cliche as it is – was to make a difference.”

Mr. Saraf now sits on the kids.now board financial committee as a volunteer to the financial team. He graduated from Carlton University with background in economics and pre-law.

“I have joined the board for the charity because I understand the true potential of this program now and I would like to take an active role in spreading it throughout communities in Canada and, maybe some day, across the world.”

View feature article layout in National Post.

What are social emotional skills? The answer is simple and has been around for ages – Aristotle said it best: Know Thyself.

Teaching our kids to know their strengths, weaknesses, talents and by encouraging them to believe in their abilities can have a greater impact on their life success than by just pushing them to get high grades.

Developing Social Emotional Intelligence in kids and adults, can help them face any situation, look at the positive and create solutions. The results: happier people.

To better understand Social Emotional Intelligence let us reference Daniel Goleman‘s 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, which brings to life this concept in a easy to understand manner.

Goleman outlines five crucial emotional competencies basic to social and emotional learning:

1. Self and other awareness: understanding and identifying feelings; knowing when one’s feelings shift; understanding the difference between thinking, feeling and acting; and understanding that one’s actions have consequences in terms of others’ feelings.
2. Mood management: handling and managing difficult feelings; controlling impulses; and handling anger constructively
3. Self-motivation: being able to set goals and persevere towards them with optimism and hope, even in the face of setbacks
4. Empathy: being able to put yourself “in someone else’s shoes” both cognitively and effectively; being able to take someone’s perspective; being able to show that you care
5. Management of relationships: making friends, handling friendships; resolving conflicts; cooperating; collaborative learning and other social skills.

kids.now’s purpose is to help develop these skills in our kids from a young age through dynamic activities, role playing, group discussions and fun exercises.

kids.now cares about our youth’s well-being, their ability to perform and their life success.  We believe that not only do these skills need to be developed NOW  but we also believe that our kids deserve to be happy!

Happiness is having people that care for you, knowing and believing in yourself, helping others and  striving for the best you!

Many think of bullying as the classic big kid taking the small kid’s snack during recess scenario. Reality is, bullying affects kids from all walks of life no matter how big, small, popular or not so popular.

A recent CNN study revealed that bullies don’t just prey on the weak, rather peer abuse has become a ‘social combat’ or way of life for kids to survive and strive at school. No one is exempt.

GIVER & RECEIVER

Abusive behaviour used to intimidate a child is the last thing parents think about when sending their kids off to school. However, kids bullying others is happening in school yards across the country.

Despite this fact, many homes don’t give kids the much needed support and security. As soon as a child steps foot into the ‘real world’, power dynamics unfold and most kids will fulfill not only the giver role but also be the recipient of abuse.

According to a study led by Professor Robert Gable of Johnson & Wales University, based in Providence, R.I., and shared by TIME Magazine, it found that “15% of seventh- and eighth-graders described themselves as both victims and victimizers. That makes sense: there is a chicken-and-egg quality to bullying — you get hurt, and then you demand a price for it.”

We may think of it as a chicken and egg problem but what it simply means is that bullying is a cycle; once you become a part of it you get hurt, you hurt others and it multiplies.

In fact, students striving to climb the social ladder at school, face more peer pressure the higher up they go. To thrive, they taunt and the notion of survival of the fittest is in motion. But it’s not survival of the fittest but rather the survival of the meanest.

BREAK THE CYCLE

Bullying is a cycle that traumatizes but the cycle can be broken. What’s needed? The first thing is to start listening. Listen to your kids, their dialogue with their friends and what you communicate to them via words and deeds.

Many adults fail to understand the conversations kids are engaged in. Rosalind Wiseman, author and educator on children and social justice, states that “many kids feel like adults just don’t get it. They think all adults are useless. My answer is, even though you think 98% of adults can’t help you, you’ve got to be able to identify one adult you think is realistic enough for you to talk to. You don’t need 100 people. You just need one.”

That one person may be you the parent, or you the coach or friend. The reality is you need to be a mentor for a kid. A mentor that listens and shares the value of self-esteem, confidence and how to succeed without being a bully or a victim of peer-pressure or abuse. A mentor that offers support and security to believe and succeed.

KIDS.NOW CANADA

kids.now, through a volunteer-led group mentoring program, empowers youth in grades 7 and 8 to believe in themselves and make positive choices that will help them reach their full potential. Focusing on anti bullying solutions and confidence building for the past 12 years, more than 11,000 students have been given the opportunity to be mentored by qualified, full-trained volunteers from leading companies such as State Farm, TD and RBC, among others and from the fields of education, arts, health and business.

HAVING A MENTOR IS A LIFE ALTERING EXPERIENCE

After-school programs like kids.now, which provides youth with a role model and tools to succeed in school, help kids reach their full potential and realize that they don’t have to put up with peer pressure. The kids.now program pairs 10 students with 1 mentor for a 12 week session. During the fun after-school program, kids learn and practice life skills including: building self-esteem, communication skills, goal setting, stress management, and conflict resolution and how to deal with peer pressure.

If you’d like to help kids combat school yard peer pressure and abuse, learn how to be a life changing mentor.

* This article was published in the AbuseHurts.ca e-zine October issue.

Although giving is something that has no time frame and can be done at any given moment, the holidays is a great time to make it a family activity. It’s important to teach our kids to become self-aware of all the wonderful things they have and be aware and empathetic of those who are not so fortunate.

By giving to others “It builds your own self esteem; [it] certainly makes you feel very satisfied with the ability to ultimately bless somebody else,” explains Paula, National Director of Programs, kids.now. Getting involved can teach kids team-building skills and awareness of social issues they haven’t been exposed to. “Becoming part of a solution to some of those needs I think comes with tremendous value and life-learning experiences for kids.”

Listen to Paula’s full interview with News 1130 am “Getting your kids involved in charities over the holidays”

Ways to give:

Volunteer at a local food bank
Clean out the playroom and donate old toys
Spend an afternoon at a Seniors home
Always say thank you!
Deliver a meal to a family in need
Send a care package to a solider
Volunteer at a soup kitchen
Shovel snow for a neighbour
Give to a charitable organization

Kids more often than not, use words and expressions towards their peers that are homophobic, racist, sexist or just plain mean. Hurtful language is damaging to our kids self-esteems because words are powerful.

Bullying has been linked to an increase likelihood of criminal conduct. It has also been linked to planned school shootings, and although it’s a sensitive topic, bullying has also been linked to suicides.

We can no longer view bullying as something that kids must learn to deal with or toughen up. It’s time to challenge bullying!

AS PARENTS AND MENTORS WE MUST SHOW OUR KIDS THAT:

They have the right to be safe
They have the responsibility to identify right from wrong, and do what’s right.

Consider how it feels to be unsafe and develop ampathy for those in difficult situations.

They are part of a collective and must treat others kindly, especially be a support for those who are being bullied.

They can challenge the use of hurtful language.

They can express their frustrations and anger in other ways and not by bullying others.

They can be successful by being kind, using positive language and by complimenting others.
Words can destroy or build. Will you be part of this year’s challenge to beat bullying with kindness?

When asked why she gives back so much, Melissa responds saying: “Because volunteering with kids.now has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done, and I want others to benefit from the experience as well.”

Melissa first heard about kids.now volunteer opportunities through her employer’s, TD Bank Financial Group (TDBFG), internal opportunities and events site. TDBFG encourages staff members to give back to the community by giving them time to volunteer, so Melissa was investigating ways to do so. kids.now seemed to meet her core values and beliefs, as well as offer added professional benefits, such as the chance to gain some experience mentoring others.

“I’ve always had a passion for giving back, and I love the feeling I get when I know I’m making a difference,” says Melissa. “I remember how difficult the tween and teen years are. I wish I had had a program like kids.now to help guide me, and I don’t think I had it half as tough as many kids do these days.”

Melissa feels the hardest part about being a kids.now mentor is dealing with the realities that kids have to deal with: “there is so much peer pressure, bullying and stress to succeed for kids of this age today, and I didn’t always have the answers,” she says. “But I know I made a difference in several kids’ lives just by being there and listening. You aren’t always sure at the time, but I have bumped into kids after the program has ended, at the mall and out in the community, and several have approached me to say ‘thanks, I’m using the skills I learned in the kids.now program to succeed in high school.’ That’s a great feeling.”

When asked if she has any advice for new volunteer mentors, Melissa says: “Just relax and take it all in. It’s always a little nerve-wracking when you go into a new situation – even for someone who has delivered the program 6 times – but that’s actually one of the coolest parts. Each group of kids is different, and you get the opportunity to get to know them, understand them, tailor the program to meet their needs, and make a real difference in their lives. I honestly don’t know who benefits from the kids.now program more, the volunteer mentor, or the kid participants.”