FAQ
Who Are We?
We are advocates for ALL children and youth EVERYWHERE! We are the founders and home of the Web of Support.
Why Do We Exist?
To compel ALL adults to anchor children/youth to their families, schools, and communities AND to support children and youth to self-activate the Web of Support (the personal village) they need to succeed.
Why Do We Need You?
To build a community of people around the world who are advocates for seeing children and youth in Full Color. Communities where adults become "Catchers of Dreams" who turn dreams into realities.
What Do We Do?
Provide meaningful, memorable, and measurable evaluative criteria, tools, educational experiences, coaching, and mentoring to guide adults in becoming more intentionally engaged in supporting all kids to thrive.
What Is Our Vision?
All the world's children and youth will be raised within a rich developmental ecology measured by the Full-Color Web of Support™.
What Is Our Mandate?
To compel adults to understand and then create rich developmental ecologies for all children and youth. We will do this through educating, coaching, mentoring, and providing valuable resources to youth, homes, schools, agencies, organizations, and communities around the world.
What Are Our Objectives?
To work alongside youth to co-create their personal villages by gathering the necessary supports they need from the family, school, temple, and community.
How Do We Catch Them?
- Compel people to learn more.
- Appreciate the strengths they have within and around them.
- Teach to deliver information and tell the story.
- Coach to guide implementation of the ideas into real action.
- Hand them off to others to encourage the fractal nature of Webs of Support.
What Do We Know?
We know what young people need to succeed.
We know youth are "hardwired" to connect and be nurtured in relationships.
We know that everyone has innate talents and skills that need to be discovered, nurtured, used, and polished.
We know that the culture of busyness is increasingly neglecting the world's young people.
We know that homes, schools, and communities must provide the strings necessary for all young people to achieve.
We know that young people need to be co-creators of their personal villages.
We know that every child has three families - the one they are given, the one who finds them, and the one they create.
We know that each youth is unique and that every youth shares common experiences.
What Do We Stand For?
- We listen to the time-honored wisdom of the elders in our societies to remember the basic principles of integrative youth development.
- We create experiences where youth and adults co-create their world and culture.
- We thoroughly review professional literature and research to understand its significance to individual youth and the youth culture.
- We systematically implement research findings - moving beyond theory to action.
- We deliver programs, initiatives, events, practices, policies, procedures, regulations, and laws that create opportunities to connect youth and adults in meaningful, measurable, and memorable ways.
How Do We Evaluate Our Efforts?
1) Increase in school success:
- Increased graduation rates, student academic achievement, attendance, student involvement in school activities, and student leadership;
- Decreased disciplinary referrals, suspensions, expulsions, and alternative school placements.
2) Increase in the number of tangible and intangible supports in the lives of children and youth.
3) Increase in the number of adults in the lives of children and youth.
4) Increase in the innate resilience of children and youth.
5) Reducing youth risk behaviors such as alcohol and drug use, school drop-out, gang involvement, suicide, teen pregnancy, teen violence, and bullying.
6) Measurable improvement in adults' perceptions of teens.
How Do We Define Student Success?
- CHOICE: The number of options that one can see at any given time,
- HEARTINESS: The ability to bounce back from adversity,
- ACTUALIZING SELF: Internalizing the skills, information, beliefs, and behaviors necessary to lead an interesting life,
- AFFILIATION WITHIN A HEALTHY FAMILY AND COMMUNITY: To live, love, connect, participate, and contribute well.