Communities That Care

Posted on June 9, 2011

Five Town CTC Honors Youth Advocates at June Meeting

Five Town Communities That Care is pleased to announce the most recent winners of its Youth Advocate Awards.  At the June 9, 2011 Five Town CTC Coalition Network Meeting Board Chair Dick Strong presented Dan Gabriele with an individual award for his service to local youth.  Mr. Gabriele has been supporting local young people by providing opportunities to learn real skills—-by employing them in his family’s business (Marriner’s restaurant), hosting basketball games at “The Rock,” or by mentoring them through life’s challenges—for more than 20 years.

Dan Gabriele (left) accepts his Youth Advocate award from Five Town CTC Board Chair Dick Strong

Also honored at the meeting was Lincolnville United Christian Church, with the Rev. Dr. Susan Stonestreet accepting the award on behalf of the congregation.  Lincolnville UCC has been a long-time supporter of Five Town CTC coalition activities, with the congregation involved in many ways from from hosting and cooking for Guiding Good Choices workshops to organizing volunteers for coalition events to providing quality-control observations in prevention programs.

The Rev. Dr. Susan Stonestreet accepts the Youth Advocate award for the Lincolnville United Christian Church

The Five Town CTC Coalition honors Youth Advocates quarterly.  Selection of nominees to receive the Youth Advocate Award is to be based on one or more of the following criteria:

1) Involved in reducing problem adolescent behaviors (such as substance abuse, suicide, violence, delinquency, school drop-out, and teen pregnancy) among our local youth.

2) Involved in reducing Five Town CTC priority risk factors in the local community.

3) Involved in promoting Five Town CTC priority protective factors in the local community.

4) Fostering increased collaboration and cooperation amongst youth-serving agencies, groups, and businesses in the local community.

5) Fostering improved communication between local youth and their community—including between youth and adults, and between youth and their peers.

6) Providing opportunities for area youth to learn new skills that they can use in service to their community.

If you know of an individual or organization fitting the criteria above please nominate them for the awards.  Nominations can be submitted by emailing the candidate’s name and contact info, along with a statement of why you feel they should receive the award to info@fivetownctc.org.

Five Town CTC has been working since 2003 to promote healthy youth development and to reduce the incidence of problem adolescent problem behaviors such as substance abuse, suicide, violence, delinquency, school drop-out, and teen pregnancy.  The organization provides direct service programming, support for other agencies providing prevention programming, public information, training, and technical assistance related to its mission.  For more information about Five Town CTC, visit www.fivetownctc.org, email info@fivetownctc.org, call 207-236-9800, or stop by the offices at 219 Meadow Street in Rockport.

Posted on June 8, 2011

Five Town CTC Adds Alex Owre To Staff

Five Town Communities That Care is pleased to announce that Alex Owre has accepted the newly created position of Director of Development for the organization.  Alex brings to Five Town CTC a background in PR, marketing and non-profit communications at diverse organizations—including EF Education, Freddie Mac, and Broadreach Family & Community Services—and is a 2009 graduate of the Midcoast Leadership Academy.  Prior to relocating to Maine in 1999, he lived in the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, West Africa.   Alex is an active member of the local community, coaching soccer and cross-country in Appleton where he lives with his wife and two children.

Five Town CTC has been working since 2003 to promote healthy youth development and to reduce the incidence of problem adolescent problem behaviors such as substance abuse, suicide, violence, delinquency, school drop-out, and teen pregnancy.  The organization provides direct service programming, support for other agencies providing prevention programming, public information, training, and technical assistance related to its mission.  For more information about Five Town CTC, visit www.fivetownctc.org, email info@fivetownctc.org, call 207-236-9800, or stop by the offices at 219 Meadow Street in Rockport.

Posted on June 3, 2011

Five Town CTC’s feature page, “Sound Off” up and running!

We are pleased to announce that we have now successfully published two issues of “Sound Off,” our youth feature in The Herald Gazette.  In addition to putting the individual articles up on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/FiveTownCTC) you can now download copies of the complete April and May issues via our website (www.fivetownctc.org).

“Sound Off” is monthly full-page feature through The Herald Gazette to give middle school and high school teens in Appleton, Hope, Camden, Rockport and Lincolnville a platform to vocalize the kind of issues that don’t normally get heard. Because most teens in our community don’t have a direct connection to mainstream media, they’ve typically been portrayed in one of two categories: those who achieve in sports and academics and those who run afoul with the law. We believe that there is much more of a range and value of self-expression that teens can offer in this community and this will be the first time a full sheet in the newspaper lends itself monthly to their personal issues and triumphs.

Kay Stephens, a Village Soup correspondent for thescene, has been hired as the Editor of this project and is actively seeking input from local schools and youth-focused agencies in the five-town community and from the teens themselves. Based on a theme provided by Five Town CTC, she will be soliciting written essays, blogs, journal entries, poems, lyrics, cartoons and photography artwork from local students. She will work with the students on editing and layout and follow up with them to make deadlines.  All submissions will be edited by Stephens and some will be published under anonymous pseudonyms.

Themes will change month to month in this newspaper feature and as the program grows, submissions will eventually be broadened to include online elements such as music, video and animation. This is a chance for students to vocalize what’s “real” in their lives and for adults to appreciate what is meaningful to the adolescents in this community.

If you facilitate, teach, or organize a group of area teens, Stephens would like to hear from you.  To set up an appointment for Stephens to come in personally and meet with your students, please email editor@fivetownctc.org; call the Five Town CTC offices at 236-9800 and leave a message for Stephens; place a message on the Five Town Communities That Care Facebook page; or stop in to the offices at 219 Meadow Street.

If you are a teen who wants to submit something individually, you can use the same contact methods listed above, but be sure to include your name and a phone number so Stephens can get in touch with you for editing purposes.