
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 8, 1995                   TAG: 9504100009
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHERI HARTMAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MANY IN THIS COMMUNITY ARE REACHING OUT TO AT-RISK TEENS

YOUR NEWSPAPER has played an important role in bringing into focus a very serious problem that perpetuates the poverty cycle in Roanoke - teen-age pregnancy. As director of a teen-pregnancy prevention program, the Teen Outreach Program, I want to let the public know that there are many unsung heroes in Roanoke who are reaching our youth and helping them to make healthier choices.

Each of you helps with your United Way contributions and your tax dollars! The Council of Community Services, a United Way agency, has played a vital role in opening the door for solutions by identifying the problem in a 1990 study as the most serious one facing our youth. It also adopted the Teen Outreach Program in 1993 so that it could become an expanded, long-term solution for addressing this problem.

United Way funding, together with Community Development Block Grant monies of Roanoke city and a state Health Department grant, forms the financial backbone of TOP, described in your March 19 newspaper (``Teaching at-risk teens to care is TOP priority''). Contributions to TOP have also been received from the Better Beginnings Coalition (committed to teen-pregnancy prevention for more than 10 years), the March of Dimes, the Seay Foundation, the Junior League and Roanoke city schools. These are groups helping us all to make a difference - a significant preventative impact.

You, as nurturing, hard-working parents, are the most important reasons our youth do develop positive, productive lives. There are many who extend their care to our children, whose struggles are exacerbated by the burden of poverty, learning disabilities or both. The pain of poverty needs all of us to help as healers. I draw my inspiration from the amazing people who help with TOP.

Prevention Plus staff members work week after week with high-school students in TOP using creative devotion to develop conflict resolution, decision-making and communication skills.

The Teen Health Center has caring and committed staff members, who also join TOP at Patrick Henry High School to promote positive, healthy development.

The Raleigh Court Health Care Center and Our Lady of the Valley have activities' directors, who warmly welcome our teen-agers as volunteers. They know that not only do teens add vitality to the lives of nursing-home residents, but the teens, in turn, benefit from that terrific feeling of having helped someone else.

School teachers help coordinate TOP, devote time and energy above and beyond their regular teaching duties to make this program possible, because they care about their students, and they see these students benefit from TOP.

Volunteers give a future to our teens as they come week after week to tutor high-school students or to transport TOP teen-agers to places where community-service work can be completed.

Dillard Paper Co. employees, Parent-Teacher-Student Association parents, Unitarian Universalist Church members, area college students, city school students, and adults like David Trail have signed up with TOP by calling the Voluntary Action Center at 985-0131. These role models demonstrate civic responsibility, the work ethic, and the importance of reaching out to others with a genuine commitment.

All who help on youth-advisory boards, at church, in schools, on sports fields and in neighborhood programs like West End Center deserve a front-page article for all they do.

Thanks to everyone - especially those who makes the Teen Outreach Program possible. You're TOPS!

Cheri Hartman is Teen Outreach Program director, Council of Community Services, in Roanoke.

by CNB