Students in the St. Louis Public Schools are at risk.  At school and at home, the predictors for drug abuse are unavoidable. Poverty, family conflict, a lack of commitment to school, behavior problems, and neighborhoods where drugs are easily accessible are all factors that put children is St. Louis at risk for abusing drugs and alcohol. The effectiveness of our programs is verified by research. Through our volunteering and mentoring efforts, Discovering Options programs change the lives of the at-risk students we serve.  To learn more about the difference Discovering Options is making in the Saint Louis community please read our Fall Newsletter!

“Discovering Options has been a tremendous learning experience for me, too. I believe St. Louis to be a city deeply plagued by racial tension, one where the racial divide is still alive and well. Discovering Options bridges this gap.”--Rev. Sue Yarber, mentor and volunteer, on the impact of Discovering Options programs on at-risk youth in St. Louis

Dollars Making a Difference!

Discovering Options is a finalist in the Dollars Making a Difference contest presented by National City Bank, 97.1 FM Talk, and K-HITS 96.  The proposal to resurrect the Mark Twain Community Garden was chosen out of 200 submissions.  Mark Twain is the neighborhood where we have delivered Family PREP for the past three years.  As a finalist, we have received $2,250 to improve the garden, a marketing campaign on 97.1 FM Talk and K-Hits 96 and over 15 National City and Emmis Communication employee volunteers! 

The Dollars Making a Difference team records the progress of each of the finalists as they implement their unique community changing plans.  Beginning April 6, 2009 and ending on April 17, 2009 video recaps from each of the three finalists will be posted on www.dollarsmakingadifference.com where the community (that is where you come in) will watch the clips and vote for the finalist they believe deserves the grand prize.  The top vote-receiving finalist will receive a $20,000 cash donation courtesy of National City.

Amachi is a unique partnership of secular and faith-based organizations working together to provide mentoring to children of incarcerated parents. Faith institutions work with human service providers and public agencies (particularly justice institutions) to identify children of prisoners and match them with caring adults.

America’s most isolated and at-risk children are the estimated 7.3 million children who have one or both parents under some form of state or federal supervision. Without effective intervention, 70 percent of these children will likely follow their parent’s path into jail or prison. The Amachi mentoring program was developed to provide them with a different path - by establishing the consistent presence of loving, caring people of faith.

Amachi mentors meet weekly with a child who has been carefully matched with them; they often live and worship in the same neighborhoods as the children. Amachi’s hope is that one-to-one mentoring by caring adults will significantly improve the life opportunities of the children. Studies have clearly demonstrated that the Big Brother Big Sister (BBBS) mentoring model has positive effects - and now through Amachi, the strengths of mentoring and congregational volunteers are brought together.

Dr. Thomas Lane, a vet in Florida, thought that prison inmates would make excellent puppy raisers, and started the first guide-dog/prison program. Not only do inmates have unlimited time to spend with the puppies, but they benefit from the responsibility of being puppy raisers in ways that are especially important to their rehabilitation: they learn patience, what it is like to be completely responsible for a living being, how to give and receive unconditional love, and -- since puppy raisers take classes and train the dogs together -- how to work as a team.

The pups live in the cells with their primary raisers, go to classes administered by Puppies Behind Bars once a week, and are furloughed two or three weekends a month to 'puppy sitters' who take the dogs into their homes in order to expose them to things they won't experience in prison. These can be as simple as hearing doorbells or the sounds of a coffee grinder, and as complex as learning how to ride in a car and walk down a crowded sidewalk.

The puppies live in prison for sixteen months, after which they are tested to determine their suitability for training as service dogs for the disabled or explosive detection canines for law enforcement. If they are deemed suitable, Puppies Behind Bars returns them to the schools where they continue their formal training.  If they do not continue on the track to become working dogs, Puppies Behind Bars donates them to families with blind children. In either case, these puppies, raised in such a unique environment, spend their lives as companions to people who need them.