Together We Light The Way: Building Stronger and Safer Communities

CRIME PREVENTION INVESTMENT FUND

The National Strategy supports innovative, grass-roots solutions to promoting safer communities with initiatives that range from efforts to foster healthy children and families, and safer school environments, and addresses factors that may prevent them, such as school problems, poor social skills, and substance abuse. The Investment Fund is a funding program that supports selected demonstration projects and encourages the sharing of information on quality initiatives across Canada, and supports research and evaluation of the costs, benefits and overall effectiveness of efforts to build safer communities.

TOGETHER WE LIGHT THE WAY: BUILDING STRONGER AND SAFER COMMUNITIES

The Together We Light The Way program presents a school-based prevention model of co-ordinated community-wide interventions to respond to the various needs of children who may engage in future anti-social behaviour. The model supports high quality and consistent nurturing of children, and encourages a secure, physically and emotionally safe environment. Support for Together We Light The Way in the Durham District School Board Region has resulted in a school-based crime prevention model ready for implementation/adaptation and evaluation in jurisdictions in other parts of the country.

The project Together We Light The Way: Building Stronger and Safer Communities will involve collaboration between the Durham District School Board and interested school and community representatives in Nova Scotia and Manitoba. Through this collaboration, a cluster (three) of school communities in each province will be identified to implement, adapt and modify the Together We Light The Way model, to successfully accommodate socio-cultural differences and expectations. Program implementation will involve identifying, in each of the selected school sites, multi-sectoral implementation teams consisting of the school principal, staff members, a police officer, a business partner, a community organization representative, a parent (school community council representative) and a student. Implementation and training plans will be developed for each site, and training provided to staffs, parents and local community partners to implement the Together We Light The Way program.

Together We Light The Way focuses on children and youth 4 to 14 years of age. Its main feature is to build resiliency and responsibility in young children and increase protective factors by involving the entire community in working with the children. A key objective of the model is for those involved in the program, school leaders, teachers, parents and the community, to work very closely together to create a common and consistent environment for the children. This approach enhances the success of children by helping them to develop self-worth, self-respect and responsibility and connects them to their communities in meaningful ways.

The program supports the reduction of anti-social tendencies in young children through the delivery of seven interconnected program components that are integrated into the school curriculum. The program components include: Respect - teaches students how to respect themselves, and others in the classroom, the local community and the global community; Circles of Love: Reading Together - encourages a love of books and reading; Choice is Yours - emphasizes the need to make wise, informed and responsible choices, and demonstrates that the positive choices you make have a positive impact on your life; Triple S - involves the community in honouring and recognizing students for their accomplishments in scholastics, sports and school activities, and service to their school and their community; Healthful Happenings - teaches students the importance of eating nutritious foods, living a healthy lifestyle and how this connects to their learning and well being; Parent Rap - facilitates meaningful parental involvement and engagement; and Connections: Classroom and Community - shows students that what they are learning in school is relevant outside the school.

The project will also include: developing a school community audit instrument to allow school communities to assess their strengths and areas for growth and development in preparation for the implementation of the Together We Light the Way program; developing the training plans and resources required to assist with further dissemination of the program; developing a process for school communities to establish effective and sustainable partnerships, as a method for securing community involvement and engagement; and developing a plan to promote, disseminate and encourage implementation of the program in school communities across Canada.