OUR VISION

To provide a safe environment and opportunities for youth to identify, practice, and fulfill possibilities for creating positive and inspiring futures for themselves, their families, and communities, and providing a choice for every student to have a mentor when they enter high school.

OUR MISSION

Empower middle and high school students, primarily in rural areas, to be fully prepared for making life choices that foster positive growth in body, mind, and spirit through a holistic three-phase community-based mentoring program and training initiative that matches students with adult mentors, and provides students and mentors with opportunities to successfully create, practice, and realize life’s unlimited possibilities.

VALUES

• Safe space:  creating an environment where it is safe to be who we are while practicing who we want to become and allowing others to do the same.
• Diverse perspectives:  recognizing the importance of other points of view where new possibilities exist.
• Action:  the ability to take action in our lives, seeing and measuring results, and making adjustments when needed.
• Positive growth in body, mind, and spirit:  acknowledging and honoring the array of influences that contributes to human growth and development.

HeadsUP Colorado Program Descriptions

Sha*Zam Mentoringback to top

Webster’s Dictionary: Sha*Zam: used to introduce an extraordinary deed, story, or transformation to life.

Phase One

ShaZam Mentoring is the first phase of a three-phase educational mentoring program designed to educate and train youth so that they may create and direct their own futures.  It is a year-long program matching 7^th – 9^th grade students with adult mentors.  Youth participants attend an orientation workshop at their school where they are invited to volunteer to participate.  A parent/student workshop provides the family with information about the expectations and guidelines of the program before youth may register to participate. Simultaneously, volunteer adult mentors participate in a 40-hour intensive training course where they learn and practice skills for being successful mentors. Mentor training includes, but is not limited to, learning techniques for listening to and relating with teenagers and building solid foundations for mutual trust.

There are four main components to this first year:

•  Four-day Wilderness Launch Course.  The Launch Course takes place in a wilderness setting to help the youth focus with minimal distractions.  It involves rope-course work, classroom interactive workshops, and transformational activities designed to start the process of revealing attitudes, behaviors and beliefs that limit the perception of what is possible in life.  Also, this time is designed to help match each youth participant with the best mentor by observing how incoming mentees and mentors interact with each other. This time sets the tone for the year.  Safe space is established!

•  One-on-One Mentoring.  The mentor/mentee relationship is the heart of ShaZam Mentoring. It is the foundation on which each youth participant comes to realize that there is an interested adult who is there for the sole purpose of supporting them in creating a successful life. This relationship is vital to the next two phases of the program. The mentor's role is to provide possible alternative perspectives, and to foster the trust key to the mentee’s ability to create and live a positive future. The mentors and mentees meet one-on-one in person a minimum of eight hours each month.

• "Community" Workshop Training.  ShaZam Mentoring participants form a "community" supporting each member's personal growth.  Community Workshops provide a forum where this community discusses successes and failures, and learns new ways of dealing with them.  This is a key component to youth realizing their lives are not so much different from everyone else’s and that they are not alone in the world.  They learn that a successful life requires training to learn positive behaviors and that practicing these positive behaviors leads to positive change.  Community Workshops focus on topics such as:
• Restoring trust
• Being the “observer” in one's own life to become ultimately responsible 
• Having choice
• Why school?
• Making powerful requests
• Listening and speaking vs. knowing and reacting
• Diverse perspectives vs. being right or wrong
• Power in being their word (doing what they say they will do)
• Sex, intimacy, and boundaries
• Commitments behind breakdowns (waking up to hidden opportunities)
• The power of determining for themselves the quality and character of their own lives

This is the foundational work to support the next phases of HeadsUp Colorado.

• Group Social Activities. Understanding that social interactions are at the center of teenage life, we use social events to promote successful personal interactions, practice personal integrity, and learn to set and respect personal boundaries.  Given that youth can sometimes display little self-control and/or exercise poor judgment in social settings, mentors are present during these group activities to help the youth become aware of constructive and destructive behaviors.  A mentor guides a youth's growth by pointing out strengths the youth can further cultivate, and weaknesses the youth can work to improve upon. We teach the importance of what it means to represent a group and how the actions of each member reflect on the group as a whole. The essential insight is that an individual is responsible not only to him or herself, but also to the group as a whole.

Rite of Passage Experience  (ROPE) Programback to top

Phase Two

The ROPE program picks up where ShaZam Mentoring leaves off, building on lessons learned in the first year.   This phase continues until the youth's senior year in high school.  Each ROPE program year is broken into quarters with each quarter having an activity and a theme (e.g., a rock climbing activity with a theme of “small steps inside the big picture”).  Many of the activities will have a physical challenge element to them.  All activities are meant to “push the limits” of what the youth consider possible. While experiencing both successes and failures, the youth discover hidden strengths and fears, learning to deal with them in constructive and productive ways.  These activities provide supervised training and practice for life’s challenges. The "community" provides constructive feedback, such as: (i) observing where a youth might physically or emotionally stop and then push through a challenge; (ii) seeing how and why a youth sets certain goals or (iii) noting when and why they might just avoid an activity altogether.  The ROPE program allows youth to become aware of how they make choices, and to notice if they are playing it safe, being reckless, or are simply not aware of the choices they can make.  The ROPE program introduces new experiences that give the youth opportunities to become aware of the vast possibilities in life and to expand upon and apply what is possible to their own futures.

There are four main components to the ROPE program:

• Physical Activity with Theme.  We at HeadsUP Colorado believe that meaningful education goes beyond the mere acquisition of knowledge and embraces putting that knowledge into positive ACTION.  Because physical activity is a clear measurement of action (i.e., you either are moving or you are not), we use physical action to impart this perspective.  Physical action also provides a measurement of progress.  It is important for the youth to see that they are progressing in order to answer the question "why am I doing this?"  In addition, by seeing the immediate result of a specific action, a youth can determine if he or she is on the right course, and make any necessary adjustments to align choices with individual commitments.  These are tools youth will use throughout their lives.

• Training and Practice.  Often, we buy into the stories that we are told by others, or by ourselves, about who we are and how life is (e.g., I am not a good student, life will always be this way, I don't have a choice).  HeadsUP Colorado offers another perspective.  We believe that at times, we are all rookies or may just not be trained in a certain area of life.  We believe that we can be trained in areas that we never thought possible -- areas such as relationships, confidence, love,  even algebra!  The training provided by the ROPE program leaves our youth with a deep confidence that they can be who they are while practicing who they want to become, and that it is possible to practice "becoming."

• Group and Peer Mentoring. This is where our youth experience the concept that “it is up to them.” At this phase, while still maintaining a relationship with their mentors, the youth no longer operate under the structure of the one-on-one mentor/mentee relationship.  Youth are influenced more by the group and by each other rather than by their individual mentors. They see how they can contribute to the lives of others in ways they had not previously realized, and reach an understanding that their own lives are significantly impacted by how life goes for others. Peer mentoring is accomplished by pairing youth with a new “buddy” each quarter. Peers are asked to participate in workgroups designed to further the ROPE program by providing each participant opportunities to choose how he or she wants to contribute to the "community."  Discernment is achieved as youth learn which community roles and positions interest them.

• Answering the Question.  Throughout the ROPE program, youth are encouraged to more fully explore and express themselves by individually asking and answering the question “Who am I as a possibility for the world?”

Senior Year Community Projectback to top

Phase Three

This final phase of the HeadsUP Colorado program is the culmination of the first two phases of the journey. Each youth member is empowered to create and execute a project that reflects who he or she is as a possibility for the benefit of a defined community.  Putting into action the principles and concepts learned in the first two phases of the program, each youth identifies a project that reflects an individual passion and promotes self-actualization.  Questions to guide creation of projects include:

• What “community” do you want to impact?
• What is your passion?
• What are you interested in participating in?
• What do you want to contribute to society?
• Where do you experience success?
• How will you measure "success?"

The Senior Project provides our youth the opportunity to practice the power and possibility of living exceptional lives that they have participated in creating.  They learn that they can create a life they love and live it powerfully while at the same time expanding their world vision and serving the common good.  Project planning and results will be documented and presented in accordance with a written plan of action created by the youth participant with the assistance of both adult and peer mentors, as well as with input from the HeadsUP Colorado community members.

Just about any project that expresses passion, possibility, and contributes a benefit to a defined community will be an acceptable Senior Project.  Youth are encouraged to embrace a project that will challenge them to create something positive for the benefit of a community thereby experiencing both the power of creating and the fulfillment of service to others.   All Senior Projects will have specific measurable results that show both growth on the part of the youth participant and benefit to the community as a whole. Projects may take any number of forms, including , but not limited to, an article submitted for publication, the creation of a website, making a presentation to a  community forum, producing a short film, or creating a work of art. Whatever form the project takes, HeadsUP Colorado is committed to our youth identifying what is possible within themselves. They start to see themselves as a possibility rather than a mere identity. 

 

Nature's Wisdomback to top

Parents and Guardians

Recognizing that adults too can benefit from the self-awareness that accompanies transformational activities and introspection, Nature's Wisdom is an on-going program for the parents and other adults involved in the lives of the HeadsUp Colorado youth.  Participants engage in activities that allow them to connect and/or reconnect with the natural world, and they are provided opportunities to learn new ways of assessing and fulfilling their own life visions.  They are given tools and approaches for enhancing relationships with children, family, friends, and others.  The program includes workshops, seminars and other events designed to identify ways of effectively relating, communicating, and being in the world.