The Center for Connected Students, Schools & Communities
The Center has been established to spearhead the Initiative for Community and Adolescent Resilience in Montana (ICARe-MT). For more information, please contact Jennifer Lutey at or 406.542.3334.
ICARe-MT will compel Montanans toward the shared responsibility for their schools and communities to increase school success, reduce problem behaviors, and increase resilience in students.
The Crisis
A teenager in Montana is more likely to kill himself than in any other state in America.
Montana is now the #1 state in suicides per capita. Hopelessness, feelings of isolation, physical abuse, and drug use have made suicide the number two killer of Montana's youth.
History suggests that this trend may worsen with today's struggling economy. During the Great Depression, suicide rates rose from 14 to 17.4 per 100,000 people in 1933.
Children and teens are more disconnected from their families, schools, and communities than ever before. We need to address the root of the problem, rather than merely aiming our resources at suicide prevention.
Targeting the core issues results in multiple positive outcomes, including:
- Raised student achievement
- Increased community-youth connections
- Reduced drop-out rates
- Reduced risk behaviors (suicide, drug and alcohol use, etc.)
Now is the time to act, to begin working toward a comprehensive solution.
The Solution
The Initiative for Community and Adolescent Resilience in Montana (ICARe-MT) will provide a full-spectrum solution to help resolve the core issues. This program will utilize the research-based Integrative Youth Development (IYD) framework. ICARe-MT will provide Montana communities with IYD tools to become intentionally engaged in the shared responsibility for educating and protecting our children. ICARe-MT will provide services, IYD resources, and technical assistance to districts engaged in community grassroots efforts.
IYD helps our youth by cultivating caring and connected communities. IYD's methods replace helplessness with empowerment, low self-esteem with higher self-worth, isolation with community engagement. ICARe-MT will result in stronger, more resilient youth, who have the tools and the attitudes to improve their lives and contribute to their communities.
ICARe-MT outcomes will include:
- Improved student proficiency in classrooms & on standardized assessments
- Better graduation rates
- More student leaders and student involvement in the community
- Healthier youth who refuse drugs & alcohol
- Youth with greater self-esteem and self-worth who no longer consider suicide
When/Where
WW IDEA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, will spearhead ICARe-MT. This program will be initiated statewide in 2009 through the state's public schools. Improving the school environments will lead to more community engagement and stronger, healthier youth.
Background
Integrative Youth Development (IYD) is a research-based program with proven success in helping our youth identify, build, and sustain their own personal villages by cultivating caring and connected communities. IYD's methods replace helplessness and isolation with empowerment and community engagement. IYD leads to stronger, healthier youth who are more able to resist suicide, drugs, and other risk behaviors.
IYD is the second-generation model for comprehensive youth development. It is based on the original Alaska Initiative for Community Engagement (ICE) program, funded in 2001 as a model for the nation, in the No Child Left Behind legislation.
The IYD framework is especially adaptive to indigenous cultures around the world and has proven its success through implementation in Native American populations. For example, Alaska led in its suicide rate per capita in 2002, and after considerable work in youth development, Alaska ranks third. Now is the time to take the Alaska ICE model, with time-learned improvements, to Montana for the next step. The book, Helping Kids Succeed - Alaskan Style, based on the Search Institute's Developmental Assets, provides clear evidence that student achievement is best accomplished when all sectors (family, school, faith, health, business, arts and youth groups) engage in the social and academic development of youth.
Project Evaluation
WW IDEA, in conjunction with its partners, ICARe-MT has three primary evaluative components:
- Increase in school success (increased graduation rates, student achievement and student leadership)
- Increase the number of developmental assets in the youth in the community
- Show a measurable improvement in adults' perceptions of teens
Through ICARe-MT, Montana has the opportunity to not only reduce suicide and raise student achievement, but, more importantly, to take the lead in reconnecting America, one student at a time.