Chuck E. Cheese's Fundraising Event

August 30, 3pm-9pm.

 

3000 Gateway Street #540, Springfield

 

Giving back to kids in our community.

 

Chuck E. Cheese's donates 15% of purchases generated by our group back to AFFEC. Friends and family members are encouraged to lend their support!

Mentor/Mentee Activity Ideas

 

Beginning at noon Sunday, join in the Blackberry bRamble Bike Celebration (behind Amazon Pool) with a bike-powered stage filled with music and entertainment, local vendors, community booths, bike competitions, a bike rodeo, tricycle races for the kids, great food, a beer garden, and much more. Everyone who bikes to the park gets into Amazon Pool for only $1!

Mentor/ Mentee Picnic

Come meet other mentors and their mentees. If you are a mentor or would like to be a mentor, please come out to our picnic and meet others that are on this wonderful journey. Bring a potluck item to share, lawn chairs or blankets and enjoy a relaxing evening at beautiful Skinner Butte Park. Please RSVP:heather@afamilyforeverychild.org

A Family For Every Child Orientation

We are going to be hosting an art show that will be a part of our annual event in November. We will be auctioning off some of the kid's artwork.

 

All proceeds from the sales of the artwork will go directly to our mentor program. We have some amazingly talented young people in our program!

 

If you have art supplies you would like to donate or the ability to help some of the kids with their projects, please contact:

Adoptions Foundations Training

Don't forget to sign up! September is right around the corner!

 

Dates:

Sept 23, 2011 (3pm-9pm)

Sept 24, 2011 (8am-5pm)

Sept 25, 2011 (8am-5pm)

 

Fees: FREE

 

Location: To Be Announced

 

Sign up: call 503-232-1211 or emailbecky@christianfamilyadoptions.org

AFFEC will be holding a weekend special needs adoption "Foundations Training" Sept 23-25 in the Eugene area. Location to be announced later. (Note: This class meets the minimum requirements for Oregon Foundations Training)

 

This class is free of charge and open to anyone seeking to become adoptive parents. This class will be limited to 50 seats. Reservations required.

 

For more information, click here ---

Mentors Needed in Portland Area

We are in need of Mentors in the Portland area. The program is moving quickly throughout the state. If you live in the Portland area and would like to be a mentor, please contact us.

A Family For Every Child Orientation

880 Springfield, OR

541-343-2856

AFFEC is having an adoption orientation meeting on Wednesday, August 31st from 6:30-8:30pm. This is free and open to the public.

You will meet the AFFEC staff, be given information about our programs, cost, financing possibilities, time frames, and information about how we can help you on your journey to adoption.

All of our programs are focused on children in the foster care system. Along with our adoption agency we also have mentoring, family finding, and matching assistance programs.

Come join us! RSVP tolisa@afamilyforeverychild.org

Volunteers Needed to Help Our Life Skills Program

We will be starting a new life skills program for our mentor children. We are looking for people in the community that can come and speak to our group of children once a month.

 

We would like to be able to offer these kids some life skills to help them as they grow into adulthood. These are some of the examples of what we are looking for.

 

A job skills person - someone to help them fill out job applications and to help them prepare for a job interview.

 

Financial skills person - someone to help them learn how to make budgets and balance a checkbook. We would like someone that can help guide these kids into colleges or trade schools.

 

Please let us know if you have a special gift you would be willing to share with these kids.

Donate to AFFEC

Would you like to contribute to AFFEC's cause for helping children? Any amount can have a lasting impact on a child. Click below!

Questions?

Feel free to call at 541-343-2856 or email:info@afamilyforeverychild.org

At its most basic level, mentoring helps because it guarantees a young person that there is someone who cares about them. A child is not alone in dealing with day-to-day worries.

 

Think back. Did you know how to study for a test or make plans for college? Do you remember wanting your first car or looking for a part-time job? Simple things that seem easy or straightforward to you now may appear to be a complete mystery to a young person.

 

Mentors provide their mentees with an experienced friend who is there to help in any number of situations.

 

Support for education

 

· Mentors help keep students in school.

· Students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52% less likely than their peers to skip a day of school and 37% less likely to skip a class (Public/Private Ventures study of Big Brothers Big Sisters).

· Mentors help with homework and can improve their mentees' academic skills.

 

Support with day-to-day living

 

· Mentors help improve a young person's self-esteem.

· Mentors provide support for students trying new behaviors.

· Youth who meet regularly with their mentors are 46% less likely than their peers to start using illegal drugs and 27% less likely to start drinking (Public/Private Ventures study of Big Brothers Big Sisters).

· About 40% of a teenager's waking hours are spent without companionship or supervision. Mentors provide teens with a valuable place to spend free time.

· Mentors teach young people how to relate well to all kinds of people and help them strengthen communication skills.

 

Support in the workplace

 

· Mentors help young people set career goals and start taking steps to realize them.

· Mentors can use their personal contacts to help young people meet industry professionals, find internships and locate job possibilities.

· Mentors introduce young people to professional resources and organizations they may not know about.

· Mentors can help their mentees learn how to seek and keep jobs.

 

The number of ways mentoring can help a youth are as varied as the people involved in each program. While the lists and statistics can be impressive, personal stories can be even more impressive. Take a look at mentoring success stories to see how mentoring works from different perspectives.

 

Statistics and Research

 

Research confirms what we knew anecdotally or intuitively before -that mentoring works. A Research Brief published by Child Trends and titled "Mentoring: A Promising Strategy for Youth Development" found that youth who participate in mentoring relationships experience a number of positive benefits.

· In terms of educational achievement, mentored youth have better attendance; a better chance of going on to higher education; and better attitudes toward school.

· In terms of health and safety, mentoring appears to help prevent substance abuse and reduce some negative youth behaviors.

· On the social and emotional development front, taking part in mentoring promotes positive social attitudes and relationships. Mentored youth tend to trust their parents more and communicate better with them.

 

Mentoring and Academic Achievement

 

High school graduation is an economic imperative in today's global economy driven by knowledge and innovation. Mentoring is a positive youth development strategy that supports the goal of reducing the dropout rate by 50 percent over the next five years. Research has shown that mentoring has significant positive effects on two early indicators of high school drop-outs: high levels of absenteeism (Kennelly & Monrad, 2007) and recurring behavior problems (Thurlow, Sinclair & Johnson, 2002). A landmark Public/Private Ventures evaluation of Big Brothers Big Sisters programs showed that students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52 percent less likely than their peers to skip a day of school. An analysis of mentoring program evaluations conducted by Jekielek, Moore and Hair found that youth in mentoring relationships present better attitudes and behaviors at school and are more likely to attend college than their counterparts.

 

Dropping out of school is not a singular event but rather the culmination of a long process of disengagement. It is critical that intervention efforts aimed at students with a disproportionate number of risk indicators for dropping out of high school reach students young enough. Children between 9 and 15 are commonly at important turning points in their lives. It is during this time that they may permanently turn off from serious engagement in school life and turn to a variety of risky behaviors that can limit their chances of reaching productive adulthood. Encouragingly, this is also the age bracket during which preventative intervention is most successful and youth are most capable of envisioning a positive future and plotting the steps they need to take to reach their goals. They are at the right stage of development to best absorb and benefit from the skills of a strong mentor (Rhodes and Lowe, 2008).

 

A recent highly-comprehensive study conducted by Communities In Schools and the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University (Dropout Risk Factors) identified a variety of predictive risk factors for dropping out. The report states that while there is no single risk factor that causes dropping out, each additional risk factor an individual faces increases the likelihood of dropping out. Some of the key alterable risk factors the study cites are:

 

· Teen parenthood;

· Substance abuse;

· Criminal behaviors;

· Lack of self-esteem;

· Poor school performance/Grade retention;

· Absenteeism;

· Discipline problems at school;

· Low educational expectations/Lack of plans for education beyond high school; and

· Lack of interaction with extracurricular activities.

 

There are also numerous external risk factors for dropping out, such as gender, socioeconomic status, level of parental education, involvement with child welfare services, living in a single parent home and having a parent in prison. Given that the more risk factors a student faces the more likely he/she is to drop out, we can extrapolate that interventions aimed at reducing and removing these alterable risk factors will be more successful at preventing students from dropping out.

 

Mentoring by a caring adult over a prolonged period of time has been shown in countless academic studies to be effective in combating these risk factors. A number of studies have revealed a correlation between a young person's involvement in a quality mentoring relationship and positive outcomes in the areas of school, mental health, problem behavior and health (DuBois & Karcher, 2005; Rhodes, 2002; Zimmerman, Bingenheimer & Behrendt, 2005).

 

MENTOR recognizes that nearly 18 million young Americans need or want mentoring, but only three million are in formal, high-quality mentoring relationships. That means more than 15 million young people still need mentors. That unmet need constitutes what we call the "mentoring gap." Finding mentors for 15 million children is a tremendous challenge that we are working to close, community by community. And with each new mentoring initiative, with each new collaboration between schools and businesses, we are steadily closing the gap.