The Stoughton Area Resource Team, Inc.
(START) provides a safety net for those in crisis. Recently, a 30-year old single father of two struggled to find work, to pay for daycare for his children and to secure a home; so much time was spent homeless and hopeless.
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Senior resilience: Self-Care Outreach
124 W. Main Street
Suite 4
Stoughton, WI 53589
Phone: 6086980375
Contact Name: Suzanne Larsen
Executive Director
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Organization Profile
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| Youth Resilience- Teaching science-based self-care - 2023 |
Amount Funded: $2,000.00 |
| Timeline:
Oct 2023 - May 2024 - in person programming for Eyes of Hope
Oct 2023 - May 2024 - video production (concurrently with in person program outreach)
Activities: Drafted Curriculum available upon request, reviewed by key stakeholders
Impact:
Informed by best practices in teaching and integrating preventive and rehabilitative therapeutic skills, Teen Resilience maximizes accessibility and provides consistent messaging across multiple platforms.
It also empowers individuals to recognize what autonomic stress responses feel like in their own lived experience (aggression, anxiety, fear) without reacting, and remain present long enough to re-engage rational thinking. This is a core competency for trauma and conflict resolution, as well as contemporary diversity, equity and inclusion curriculum. The approach is particularly effective when combined with the acquisition of self-care tools.
Simultaneously this program supports healthy relationships by developing vocabulary for agency, compassionate self-regulation and interpersonal communication. The assets created for Youth Resilience may be replicated in presentation, shared and accessed repeatedly to support integration.
MSYS retains the rights to the curriculum and assets created for this program, but gives permission for SWC to use them in perpetuity. Videos will be made available to Stoughton residents through community health and MSYS websites. The intention is to make tools for therapeutic resilience available to as many people as possible to develop common self-care vernacular and cross-populate tool usage throughout the community.
Digital assets produced will be used with any channels already in relationship with MSYS, for example the participants in therapeutic yoga for breast cancer class sponsored by Stoughton Health (a program promoted to 2500 community members).
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| The goal of the Youth Resilience program is to introduce Stoughton-area teens and tweens (as well as parents and educators) to their own inner-resilience while teaching self-care tools. MSYS will create a 25 Weeks of Whole-Being wellness curriculum for local youth (ages 8-18). Key collaborators include Girl 2 Girl / Eyes of Hope, Stoughton Wellness Coalition (SWC), and the Stoughton Public Library.
Curriculum highlights self-care tools from Six Dimensions of Wellness. Following evidence-based processes for establishing healthy habits, each session will be available in three formats allowing for guided (extrinsic, structured, in community) and autonomous (intrinsic, responsive, independent) practice of emerging skills:
In-person presentation (adapted to location and audience)
Short video (2-8 minutes)
TikTok - positive norming
Content will be provided by credentialed faculty of Yoga Alliance (YACEP), Yoga Therapists certified by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (C-IAYT) and licensed therapists with specialties in Somatic Experiencing, Art Therapy, and Trauma and Tension Release Exercises. Other professional educators may be brought in with guidance from stakeholders.
Videos will be available to Stoughton Area School District employees for their benefit, as well as to develop common self-care vernacular and cross-population tool usage.
Example curriculum from Wellness Series
Breathe Well- Introduce the idea that how we breathe (whether we are aware of it or not) impacts how we feel. Comparison of up-regulation and down-regulation, pausing between to sense and feel. Practice: Introduce diaphragmatic breath, nose breathing, three-core breathing and buzzing “bee” breath.
Video featuring a take home self-care tool of three-core breath ending with humming. This releases endorphins and nitric oxide, a vasodilator and stress reliever.
At the heart of the Youth Resilience program is the 2023-2024 school year Girl-2-Girl program. MSYS is collaborating with Stoughton-based non-profit Eyes of Hope to develop a 29-week curriculum with 29 corresponding 90-minute in-person sessions between Oct 23 and Jun24. Girl-2-Girl historically serves ~12 teens. This year Youth Resilience will be offered as a teen program with Stoughton Public Library.
MSYS is also collaborating with the SWC to produce the corresponding videos for the initial 6-week Six Pillars of Wellness series. Videos will be posted to the SWC website, and participa |
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