Communities That Care
The Communities That Care is a community-wide initiative for the benefit of the community's youth. It is a system that empowers the communities to choose effective prevention policies and programs that match the community needs, promote the positive development of children and youth, prevent adolescent problem behaviors - including alcohol and other drug use, delinquency, teen pregnancy, dropping out of school and violence. The Communities That Care system is inclusive (involves all parts of the community in promoting healthy development), proactive (targets predictors of problems, rather than waiting until the problems themselves occur), is grounded in rigorous research from a variety of fields, and is customized to each community.
Since 1990, hundred of communities across the United States, as well as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia, have used the Communities that Care system. Evidence of effectiveness has been shown that the system improves the quality of community planning and decision making for positive youth development and prevention of adolescent health and behavior problems. It has been shown to lead to increased use of tested, effective prevention approaches.
The Communities that Care System aims to strengthen individuals, families and communities by reinforcing healthy behaviors and commitment to positive social values. "It is a truly a bipartisan, apolitical process that results in better, healthier communities that help children grow up with more hope, more opportunity and better outcomes."
Communities That Care in Cyprus
The replication of the Communities That Care system in Cyprus is the 5th international replication. It was first introduced by Latsia Municipality in 2006 in a trial to raise healthy children in Cyprus.
In collaboration with Latsia Municipality, Doves Olympic Movement implements a sports and educational initiative that has the goals of the Sports, Educational and Development Units. Specifically, it aims to transfer knowledge and skills to the participants that can exercise them in their daily lives, to increase creativity and teach problem-solving strategies, to enable the individuals to set goals and empower themselves, to identify social problems, develop an action plan and implement it to solve the problematic situation either partially or in total, and at last, to provide support to the youth to develop their interests in collaboration with youth from all over the world.
More than 120 participants meet daily and practice their favorite sports activity (basketball, football, volleyball, handball etc). The program also incorporates a cultural component. The participants study dancing (Salsa, Tango Argentina, Greek Dances, Hip-hop etc), theatre, music, and painting. During the weekends the participants are exposed to many other non-traditional sports activities, such as rock-climbing, skiing, shooting, arching, canoeing and so forth. The educational part of the program is implemented in two phases: through discussions during the daily meetings (emotional education and conflict management), as well as during the weekends with lectures/presentations from experts on themes that are of great interest to youth, such as sports and violence/ hooliganism, nutrition of athletes, anorexia-bulimia, Olympic Values, sports psychology, technology (Skype, Global Ed., Filming etc), how to be safe in the road, environmental awareness, astronomy and so forth.
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