Center for Teen Empowerment - Boston, MA | Somerville, MA

CONSULTING & TRAINING

Teen Empowerment's successful methodology can be adapted for use in many different environments. We offer consulting services in the following elements of our approach, customized to meet clients' particular needs:

Interactive group facilitation (based on our book, Moving Beyond Icebreakers)
Behavior management methods and systems
Program assessment
Program design
Communication skills
Conflict resolution skills
Community building

TE's consulting and training staff can plan and facilitate a single workshop or arrange for a longer-term consulting relationship, enabling the client to use TE's group facilitation, behavior change, and/or community building methodologies to fulfill their goals. Clients are often school departments, universities, police or other municipal departments, and other nonprofit organizations.

As word about the value of the TE Model has spread, many organizations have adapted pieces of it for their own use, from a short training for staff to basing their organizational structure on TE's example.

Our approach has been developed and field-tested over thirty years of work with both youth and adults. In that time numerous organizations, such as Year Up, the Food Project, and City Year, have incorporated elements of the TE Model into their work.

For information about consulting and training services for your organization, contact Sapna Padte at 617-536-4266 ext. 306 or sapna@teenempowerment.org.

Moving Beyond Icebreakers 101
How many times have you facilitated a meeting or workshop and wondered how to get meaningful input and participation from the participants in your session? Teen Empowerment offers workshops based on our group facilitation book Moving Beyond Icebreakers. Interactive methods are usually ignored or marginalized as "ice breakers" to be used only in the first few moments of a community meeting, or first few hours or days of a group's experience. This workshop demonstrates the depth and richness of several interactive exercises from Moving Beyond Icebreakers. Experience for yourself the potential these methods have to make meetings and workshops more dynamic and constructive.

Through this workshop, you will understand the relationship between interactive agendas and increased productivity and engagement in a group. You'll learn several specific techniques that encourage group members to generate ideas, build consensus and investment in decisions, and build relationships, and you'll learn how to use them to engage the hearts, minds, and energies of diverse groups of people. Whether you work with children, teens, or adults, you will leave this workshop with specific tools you can use in the next meeting you facilitate.

The next scheduled workshop is Thursday, December 4, from 9:30-12:30, at 48 Rutland Street, Boston. The cost of the workshop is $40. Contact us to register or to be notified about future workshop dates.

Workshop participants may purchase a copy of Moving Beyond Icebreakers for $20. This is 50 percent off the retail price! Please let us know when you register that you are interested in this promotion.

CONSULTING AND TRAINING CLIENTS
Clients of TE’s consulting and training services include:

Bank of America
- Conducted orientation and end-of-program evaluation workshops for 100 Bank of America summer youth employees
BOLD (Building our Lives Drug Free) Fall River
- Planned and facilitated youth leadership trainings focusing on program planning
Boston Public Schools
- Assisted with team-building among faculty members and developing specialized interactive curricula for teacher-requested classroom interventions;
- Created a mechanism for student voice at Urban Science Academy in the West Roxbury Education Complex;
- Facilitated workshops for students in the LEAH program (Leaders through Education, Action, and Hope). Youth in this program serve as teen mentors to middle and elementary school children; and
- Facilitated trainings on the needs of urban public school students for over 300 incoming teachers during the BPS New Teacher Institute.
City on a Hill (Boston public school)
- Conducted violence prevention workshops for high school students.
Fall River (MA) Healthy Youth Task Force
- Trained 15-20 peer leaders to facilitate break-out sessions at the Fall River Mayor’s Youth Summit.
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
- Designed "icebreakers" portion of New Graduate Orientation for over 200 incoming graduate students. Trained Fletcher staff to facilitate small groups during this part of the orientation.
GEAR UP
- Conducted Leadership and Success workshops for middle school students who are learning about access to higher education.
Girl Scouts of Montachusett Council, Inc.
- Conducted Introduction to Facilitation training for senior Girl Scouts who will be leading their own workshops.
Metro North Regional Employment Board
- Designed and facilitated youth focus groups.
New England Aquarium
- Trained supervisors how to incorporate TE’s Feedback system into their model for staff working with teens.
Rochester AmeriCorps
- Facilitated opening activities.
Somerville Community Schools Summer Camp
- Conducted a leadership development and team-building workshop for adult summer camp staff.
Upward Bound Talent Search / TERI
- Conducted a team-building and leadership workshop for incoming middle school students for a summer program.
Year Up
- Trained Year Up staff in TE's basic Group Facilitation approach as well as the use of a modified version of TE's Behavior Management System.
Boston After School for All Partnership
- Conducted a research project to assess what young people need and want in after-school programming. Download the report.

CONFERENCES
Teen Empowerment has recently presented at the following conferences:

NetAid Poverty Fighting Summit in Long Island, NY; July 2007
- Workshop: "Investing Youth in Fighting Global Poverty"
Citizens' Housing and Planning Association Conference, Boston MA; April 2007
- Workshop: "Bridging the Gap Between Youth, Security, and Police"
National SADD conference, Boston, MA; July 2006
- Workshops included "Extreme Skills: Hands On Activities for Large Audiences" and "Turning Ideas into Action"
National Conference for Community Foundations, Boston, MA; September 2006
- Conducted the conference opening.
Centering Pregnancy National Conference in Atlanta, GA; September 2006
- Day-long advanced facilitation training for nurse midwives and other health care professionals who teach and facilitate prenatal groups.
Boston Centers for Youth and Families Youth Workers Symposium, Boston MA; March 2008
Youth Workers Intensive, Boston MA; March 2008
- Presented a workshop on group facilitation at the annual conference for greater Boston youth workers, sponsored by The Medical Foundation.
Youth Development Approaches to Youth Violence Prevention, Worcester, MA; June 2008 (Sponsored by MA Department of Public Health)

BRIDGING THE URBAN-SUBURBAN DIVIDE
In 2006, 2007, and 2008, TE organized an exchange between classes at The English High School in Boston (a public school in the Jamaica Plain area) and suburban Winchester High School. After preparation that involved readings, discussion, and student-to-student email exchanges, students at each school spent a day visiting the other. For more information about this program, see TE's Spring 2006 newsletter.