Services

Social, Emotional, and Character Development (SECD):

Cultural Influencers/Credible Messengers provide character development activities to identified students referred by the school administration, who require training that is relevant to establishing appropriate values, beliefs, and building a sense of self. PIM has incorporated designed sessions to produce human transformation in youth who need to develop a mastery of life skills.  Interaction topics include:

  • Values Clarification

  • Leadership Development

  • Cultural Awareness

  • Academic Excellence

  • Problem Solving Skills

  • Stress and Anger Control

  • Help with Peer Pressure

  • Mending Family, Community & Professional relationships

  • Bullying awareness/prevention

  • Gang Awareness

  • Self Esteem Building

Restorative Practices

Cultural Influencers/Credible Messengers provide proactive, responsive, and sequential circles to assist schools in creating a positive school climate by achieving positive changes in student behavior. In his book, Restorative Circles In Schools, Bob Costello states: “Traditional punitive discipline does not achieve positive changes in student behavior and fails to address the breakdown of basic decorum. Using proactive circles before problems occur, however, will begin the process of improving school climate and achieving the kind of durable solutions that schools need” (page 21).

Proactive Circles, by their very structure, convey certain important ideals and values without the need for discussion:

  • Equity — Literally everyone in the circle has equal seating

  • Safety and trust — You can see everyone in a circle, so nothing is hidden.

  • Responsibility — Everyone has a chance to play a role in the outcome of the circle.

  • Facilitation –The circle reminds the leader to facilitate rather than lecture.

  • Ownership — Collectively, the participants feel the circle is theirs

  • Connections – These are built as everyone listens to everyone else’s responses.

Social-Emotional Learning/Mentorship

Research indicates that youth participating in school-based mentoring programs are more likely than non-mentored peers to report having a non-parental adult who they look up to and talk to about personal problems, who cares about what happens to them and influences the choices they make. Research further suggests that both research and common sense leave little doubt that youth need caring and consistent relationships with adults to navigate their way through adolescence and beyond. For many youths, however, there is no adult who is naturally available to provide this kind of support. To fill this, void, there has been an increase informal mentoring programs, most prominently in community-based settings. These community-based programs have shown the ability to improve youth behaviors and attitudes. Evaluation results provide clear evidence that involvement in consistent, long term, well-supervised relationships with adults can yield a wide range of tangible benefits for youth, including improved grades and family relationships and decreased alcohol and drug use.

Cultural Influencers/Credible Messengers provide peer mediation, family visits, group, and one-on-one mentoring to youth to provide emotional support and life coaching which assists students with their socioemotional development. Our mentoring model will assist students with:

  1. Admission and Grieving

  2. Confrontation and Disclosure

  3. Forgiveness and Reconciliation

  4. Restoration and Healing

  5. Self-Awareness

  6. Self-Management

  7. Responsible Decision Making

  8. Social Awareness

  9. Relationship-Skills

PIM uses the Talks curriculum to guide its mentoring and life skills sessions. The vision of talks is to share wisdom between generations. The purpose of talks is to lead young men and women to make personal commitments to integrity and excellence. The goal of talks is to structure opportunities for constructive dialogue between mature, adult role models and youth, by creating networks between schools, and communities that will provide instruction in moral, ethical, and responsible living.  The approach Talks uses is to coordinate weekly and/or daily one-on-one and group successful mentoring opportunities between adults and youth. New Vision Youth Services through its Positive Impact Movement program implements a Cognitive Behavioral approach that is designed to change the thought processes of youth from negative to positive.