Program LIVES Week 20 Recap & the future

Hello and welcome back to the Program LIVES blog brought to you by Tikkun Long Island. This week will cover Program LIVES Week 20 and will discuss the future of Program LIVES.

Week 20 - Thursday, July 2, 2015

This session was led by Taylor and was a 1v1 session with one of the group participants. Being that the summer is a tough time for everyone to get on one schedule (more on that later), only one group participant was available for our regularly scheduled meeting.

At this meeting, Taylor continued the dialogue with the group participant that has occupied most of the discussion the last few weeks. Taylor spoke about summer plans and about the challenges and opportunities that summer brings. Summer can be tough for those in the age group we work with. Many jobs are not interested in high school students as the time to train them is too long compared to how long they are able to work for. Additionally, summer can be tough on high school age kids because there isn't the same strucure that the school year provides. Unfortunately the additional time on their hands can sometimes lead to poor decision making. Our focus is to make sure that this does not happen to any of our group participants. We want our participants to either work, volunteer or contiue their studies. We have a great group of participants and we are confident that they will use the summer to thrive and better themselves.

One of the things Taylor discussed with the group participant is doing a tour of the court system. This is something that multiple group members have expressed an interest in. We are communicating with a few different judges to see if we can have their permission to do this and knock on wood, we are close to landing one. With so many people having either had contact with the court system themselves or having a family member who has had contact, it is important for the participants to understand the system and to draw back the curtain a bit. We hope to have this arranged for and executed shortly.

The Future

After a successful 20 week run, we are winding things down with the current group. With summer being a tough time to coordinate schedules and with our group participants having many different commitments all over the Island, meeting once a week does not seem feasible for the time being.

What we have decided to do is to adopt a more open schedule. Instead of meeting once per week, we are going to meet with the current group participants at mutually beneficial times. We continue to be in contact with the current group participants and in addition to the court visit (see above), we plan to do a few more trips.

While things are wrapping up with the current group of participants, they will always be welcomed back. Once we get things going with a new group, the prior group participants will be invited back and can attend on a regular basis. Our goal is to build a community and to help as many people as possible. Our doors are always open.

Thank you for your continued support and please check this blog and this website often as we will post any announcements as soon as we can!!