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Cindy Dolben RN
Noble Health Center
388 Somersworth Rd
North Berwick, Maine 03906
Phone 207-676-2175
Fax 207-676-2204
cdolben@sad60.k12.me.us

“You cannot educate a child who is not healthy, and you cannot be healthy if you are not educated.”

Hello every one let me start by introducing who we are. We are the young people, the next generation of leaders. We are the ones who will bring harmony, equality, farness, and justice by learning from one another and by teaching one another. We are the leaders of tomorrow and the ones who will lead the way for the ones younger then us. We are the generation of change. We are youth that are trying to make both our community and the world a better place by tackling one issue at a time.

We are a group that is called “What’s Next?” from Portland High School and we are working with the Portland High Health Center to educate teens about health issues by doing peer to peer projects. The reason why we got started was because In the year 2008 about 3 or 4 students where stunned at the rate of teen pregnancies in our school and community so they came together to discuss this issue and to find a way to prevent and to educate. With every group meeting that was held by these students a room was filled with passion and even more interest in all that we could accomplished. From that we planned our first presentation which got Portland high students asking “what next?” will we present. That’s where our club name “What’s Next?” came from. With the help of Portland High School’s health center and our adviser Phyl Rubinstein we continued these presentations and later on we did an HIV/AIDS awareness day which was so successful that we actually ran out of testing tools and the health center had to order more immediately.

The reason why this group and what we do is so important is because it is effective in raising awareness and getting the youths attention* we realized that peer to peer projects and a twist of creativity made people interested in what we had to say; it made people listening and it made many think about their own lives and how they can keep themselves safe. Our presentations helped many students realize that there are places and resources available to them in their communities and better yet their school. This group is important because by it we inspire, prevent, and most importantly educate.

Our health center offers just about every thing the doctors office offers, such as teeth cleaning, birth control, shots, physicals, and we even have a social worker who takes care of mental health needs. We know through research that school based health centers keeps students in school and decreases absenteeism; not only that, but we also Provide health care for student who mights not have it.

If there is no funding to keep the health center open, then like I said before, there may be students that would be left without a school health center that offered many of the same things the doctors office did. If we didn’t have funding then we would be left with out a supervisor to coordinate our club. If we are left without funding, then we cant get creative with much of our projects. Which mean it could be harder to bring in speakers to come and talk to our students. If we didn’t have funding then it would be difficult to continue doing all that we are working on right now.

What we are doing is one step closer to a better world* we are preventing many students from engaging in risky behaviors and through it I know we are changing at least a handfull of students with each project presented. We are Portland high school students and we would like to say thank you for listening.

Two Calais High Students Present Workshop at The National Assembly on School-Based Health Care (NASBHC) Annual Conference  

 Sean Cavanaugh and Jesse Clark, both long-time members of the Calais Middle/High School Blue Devil Health Center’s Teen Advocacy Group (the TAG Team), recently attended the National Assembly of School-Based Health Center’s annual convention as presenters of a workshop titled Herding Cats!: How One SBHC learned to TAG and Release Youth Advocacy Using the Net. The were assisted and accompanied by Jay Skriletz, the TAG Team advisor and Blue Devil SBHC’s Youth and Community Advocacy Co-coordinator. The convention was attended by over 700 individuals from all corners of the United States, and nearly 50 youth advocacy coordinators, school-based health center administrators and providers, and youth advocates registered for the workshop.

The presentation opened with a brief history of the TAG Team’s first five years. In the overview many projects were discussed, both those that have been big successes and those that were less successful. Time constraints are always a difficulty and one common to many youth advocacy groups. The desire to explore the web for solutions to this difficulty is what led to the discoveries the presentation shared at the conference.

Youth Advocacy is a very important service provided by the school-based health centers. It gives youth a voice in the services that affect them most closely and elicits strong commitments from youth to better their schools, health centers, and communities. Herding Cats! Focused on how various internet tools, many of them beta, or development (and usually free), versions can facilitate the work of youth advocates by encouraging “virtual” meetings and collaborations using the internet. Some of the tools were virtual classrooms like moodle.org and wiziq.com; others are the common social networking sites like facebook.com and twitter.com which, even though are not available on the schools’ web-server, are commonly used by many organizations to connect with similar groups and potential funders; video conferencing sites like skype.com and oovoo.com were also discussed as ways that youth advocates can meet with youth from other schools and also with community partners in several parts of the state without traveling.

Both on-line chatting and video-conferencing were actually used to collaborate with students at Indian Township Elementary School and the staff at the Holocaust and Human Rights Resource Center at the University of Maine in Augusta to make progress on the Telling Truth oral history project the TAG Team contributed to this past year. The virtual classrooms are in regular use as meeting places and bulletin boards that team members use to share information and ideas when their busy schedules make it difficult to meet.

The presentation concluded with the lessons the team has learned during the time spent exploring internet tools. Most importantly is that these tools are no substitute for the bonding that happens in face-to-face meetings. These tools offer support for the working relationships and commitments the Team forges during meetings and celebrations. The presentation was warmly received and both Sean and Jesse were highly regarded as public speakers.

Results:

•  MYAN, including college intern Chelsea Schoen, prepared and facilitated this centralized training in Waterville on October 31st.  6 Adults and 16 youth attended the training.
• Created detailed interactive curriculum for the SBHC fall centralized training.  Goals for the training included: Advocacy training and skill building, opportunity to network, ask questions and share needs/concerns, MEASBHC overview and clarifying goals for the year.  These goals were created in collaboration with MEASBHC Executive Director in order to best address the needs of the groups and advisors.
• Created and distributed a resource tool kit for each participant that included resources on:  action planning, advocacy, community engagement, creating change, how to write and distribute petitions, working with Legislators, presenting testimony, public speaking tips, youth engagement, tips for youth and adult partnerships and how to write letters to your Legislators.  *If you would like pdf versions of these resources for your records please let us know. 
• 100% of participants reported gaining skills, resources, information and connections. Reflections from the meeting were all very positive and outcomes from this meeting are listed here:  
  • “In all my years of going to SBHC trainings this was the best one I have ever been to.  It was fun, informative and my students had a great time.”
  • “Great work! Fun, fast, educational day.”
  • “This was my first MYAN training. I enjoyed every minute!!”

Portland Public School

At the invitation of WKKF, Phyl Rubinstein and Odera Bonney, a student from Portland High traveled to New Mexico on 12/10/08 to be part of a panel presentation along with SBHC staff from New Mexico at the annual Rural Minority Health Care Conference in Albuquerque, NM.  The topic was student engagement and how SBHCs work with multicultural students.  30 participants