Adult, Parent and Youth Trainings

Coalition Pathways, Inc. offers FREE trainings within the local geographic area of Erie County, PA on various topics for parents, teacher in-service, youth-serving organizations, faith communities, civic organizations, etc. For information on organizations that provide trainings “for a fee” outside of Erie County, PA email: info@coalitionpathways.com. Coalition Pathways, Inc. provides the knowledge and tools for a school or community to take action to solve a problem.

Youth trainings usually result in positive action, advocacy and involvement of youth leaders at the local grassroots level, such as getting involved in tobacco retail store compliance checks with the PA Department of Health, or alcohol compliance checks with law enforcement for older teens or Leadership Conferences with statewide organizations or national or Federal agencies.  Call or email for more information, or, to request a training.

Lead and Seed is a favorite training and a nationally renowned program and process for adults and youth. Trainings are free in Erie County, funded by the Erie County Office of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

“Lead and Seed” is a 2-dayprocess, in which adults, such as parents, youth pastors, youth-serving civic organization facilitators or teachers are trained to return to their schools or communities to provide training to their own youth leaders in middle or high school, to reduce and prevent underage drinking tobacco and other drugs.  Lead and Seed is an innovative technique that combines BOTH the “program” approach (Phase I) and best “practice” approach (Phase II.) Participants also receive 100+ examples of replicable, youth led projects to reduce underage drinking in their communities, formatted in terms of goals, objectives, materials, action steps, enhancement examples and measurement recommendations.

Phase I, (LEAD), is the “Instructional Phase” that deals with the program approach, “individual change,” in an effort to fix and change individual adolescent knowledge, attitude and skills. It is during this 2 day instruction that youth also explore the specific causes of underage drinking in their community, what strategies might work where they live, work, play and pray, and how they are going to measure behavioral change for the strategy in the action plan that create. (What’s your yardstick?)  
Phase II , (SEED), is the flexible period of time following the 2-day program instruction- the Community Action phase-whereby the trained youth participants implement the action plans and strategies they developed during Phase I of Lead and Seed.  This Lead and Seed configuration of “training first” and “then implementing” plans, is helpful because in Phase I youth are provided with the “tools” they need to localize and take charge of their own efforts and outcomes. This is the beginning of “population-level” change that would occur in Phase II. The adult role is to support and assist the youth in attaining their goals.

The goals are to prevent and reduce underage drinking, teen tobacco use and illicit drug use. 

The objectives of Lead and Seed are to:

• Build human, financial and technical capacities
• Identify successful leadership characteristics and styles
• Create and implement a planning process that includes implementation steps as well as process and outcome measurement
• Increase knowledge, skills and attitude change at the “individual level” related to underage alcohol consumption and consequence facts, teen tobacco use and illicit drug use, decision making and problem solving processes
• Initiate best practice strategies that will contribute to behavioral change at the “population level,” producing long term, meaningful environmental change in communities to prevent and reduce underage drinking, teen tobacco use and illicit drug use