ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 3, 1996 TAG: 9607030046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
At an age when many teen-agers are earning their driver's licenses and absorbing MTV, 16-year-old Dewayne Faulkner was spending one afternoon a week this year tending to handicapped preschoolers at Roanoke's Grandin Court Elementary School.
He called them his "little buddies," children who knew little about him, only that he was someone older who showered them with attention.
Faulkner, who will be a senior at Patrick Henry High School this fall, had trouble Tuesday describing the youngsters' impact on him. He looked away when asked about it and shrugged.
"I don't know," he said. "Every time I have to leave, they tell me they don't want me to leave. They want to go home with me."
Faulkner is one of a group of Roanoke teen-agers who participate in the Teen Outreach Program, an effort that works to steer them away from behavior such as truancy, academic failure and substance abuse.
TOP uses volunteer community work, life-skills training and adult mentoring as preventive tools. The program started in 1990 with 20 students from Patrick Henry High School. During the 1995-96 school year, nearly 60 students - including Faulkner - at Patrick Henry, William Fleming High School and the Noel C. Taylor Learning Academy participated.
Program representatives announced Tuesday that the program had found a permanent home at Family Service of Roanoke Valley. TOP had been housed temporarily in the Council of Community Services, a Roanoke human services planning agency.
This week TOP was officially folded into Family Service - a nonprofit organization that provides professional services to families, such as parent-child counseling and in-home services for the elderly. The move is expected to double TOP's participation and broaden its reach to include schools, churches and community-based organizations throughout the Roanoke Valley.
"There is a danger in our community of not working as coordinated as we could, not taking advantage enough of each other's strengths to enhance each other's programming," said Cheri Hartman, TOP's program director. "I'm really excited about the potential here."
TOP's funding sources have included the United Way of Roanoke Valley, the Virginia Department of Health, Roanoke Community Development Block Grant money, The Roanoke Times and the Edgar Thurman Foundation.
Two years ago, statistics were compiled on TOP's impact. Patrick Henry TOP participants' and nonparticipants' behaviors in the 10th grade were compared with their behaviors in the ninth grade:
* 86 percent of participants failed fewer courses in the 10th grade than in the ninth grade, compared with 39 percent of 10th-graders not in TOP;
* 81 percent skipped fewer days of school, compared with 44 percent of 10th-graders not in TOP;
* 91 percent had fewer contacts with police, compared with 65 percent of 10th-graders not in TOP;
* 33 percent were new to the honor roll, compared with 9 percent of 10th-graders not in TOP;
* 57 percent were sexually active, compared with 65 percent of 10th-graders not in TOP.
Faulkner said his grades rose from C's to B's after he joined TOP.
TOP ``just keeps your mind concentrating,'' he said. If his grades weren't up to par, ``I knew I couldn't go see my little buddies.''
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