The MacMurray Foundation and Alumni Association has awarded a community grant to the Crisis Center Foundation in Jacksonville to support healthy relationship education for teens.
The funding helped expand the foundation’s violence prevention programming into Greene County, building on existing outreach in Morgan County. Lessons cover bullying prevention, healthy relationships and teen dating violence, using interactive activities to teach young people practical coping skills.
Crisis Center Foundation Executive Director Dona Leanard says the grant covered a variety of items: “We mainly used it to purchase food to feed the participants, gas cards for them to eliminate the barrier for them to get there to participate. We paid for incentives for them to participate because with teens you always want that. We did a little bit of printing and then we purchased new materials, workbooks and books and stuff for the ladies to use to add to their curriculum.”
Community Educator Anna Sprague says that Greene County especially presented a need for the programming: “We had been in schools doing the ‘Hands are not for Hitting’ [program] with the little kids, bullying prevention, just all that kind of stuff. Then, in the older grades, we did our healthy relationship stuff and teen dating violence prevention. With all of that surrounding all the schools that we had gone to between Carrollton and North Greene, and I think at one point we were in Greenfield, we had saw this need of just more information that isn’t accessible to them because [they are located in] rural areas. They don’t get the communication. Families are kind of siloed in their own little town that they’re living in. We wanted to bring the [information] and programs that we do in Morgan County to them. Our kids in Morgan County, we’ve had I think two or three kids come again each year because they like what they learn and how we’re presenting it to them.”
Community Educator Naomi Trotter says that the curriculum engages students in multiple ways: “Basically, we used a lot of respect.org material, a lot of national domestic violence hotline material, and then also social emotional learning aspect curriculum that we have, too. We incorporated all those curricula into one, so it’s not just one curriculum. So it’s something that goes by school standards as well because they have to meet certain standards in school curricula. We wanted to make sure that component was included in ours. We also want to make sure that people know that our curricula that we do offer in our violence prevention are free for schools. I’m one of those people where I am a visual [learner], but I’m also a hands on. So it’s not just a lecture type [lesson] because they get tired of that in the classroom setting. There has to be an interactive engagement kind of activity to buy in with your kids, make it fun and engaging and so they can take something away. We do these healthy coping skill boxes that they add to each session that they can have at the end and they’ll have this toolbox that they have to continue on and use it for the remainder of whenever they need it. And those skills will always be there and they can remember our lesson and our sessions that we had together and hopefully we’ll see them the next year or they’ll invite someone or tell someone about us.”
The foundation provides its violence prevention curriculum to schools at no cost.
The grant announcement comes during October’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The MFAA says the program reflects MacMurray College’s core value of knowledge and continues the college’s legacy of community service. The grants of up to $5,000 provide financial resources to not-for-profit organizations, school districts or educational programs create or improve a project that is beneficial to the community.