NIPSCO Donation Helps Prepare Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

NIPSCO-Donation-Helps-Prepare-Tomorrows-Leaders-TodayThanks to a $7,000 donation from NIPSCO, 3 Gary, IN schools are now better positioned to reduce incidences of detention, suspension and expulsion within their walls and to prepare tomorrow’s leaders today. Through Indiana Parenting Institute (IPI)’s SHYNE program, Glen Park Academy, Gary Lighthouse Upper Academy, and Beveridge Elementary School can now assist their delinquent students and their parents with strategies geared towards dropout prevention.

Studies consistently show that children who begin to exhibit aggression as pre-adolescents are much more likely to drop out of school and have histories of substance abuse, interpersonal violence, and criminal behavior in their adolescence. SHYNE, a life skills and parenting curriculum based on OJJDP (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) evidence-based programming, operates under the premise that early intervention, coupled with parental support and involvement, reduces the onset of these unhealthy outcomes. SHYNE targets both late elementary and middle school students (ages 7-14 years) who are beginning to demonstrate signs of severe aggression and social dysfunction at school (e.g., truancy, bullying, and/or disobedience), and their parents, to teach them simultaneously how to circumvent these adverse behavioral trends and improve their functioning in school and in life, all in a school-based environment.

IPI’s Marketing and Community Relations Director recently commented in an article that many of our current social ills surface from a deficiency in the all-crucial social skills, which govern “success-ability” in culture and in society. “With deficient knowledge in how to successfully operate in the environment in which you find yourself, you are destined only to fail due to ineffective and most often destructive decisions.” SHYNE serves as a bridge to get these life skills to those most in-need of them, at a time of development still conducive to their assimilation, in order to intervene and to transform life choices from destructive to productive – from emotional to rational.

“Supporting youth is vital to the future of our community,” said Eddie Melton, manager of community relations for NIPSCO. “The SHYNE program will help ensure that future is bright.”

To learn more about SHYNE, or to “Help a Parent. Save a Child.” like NIPSCO has, contact IPI at (219) 886-1111. Also visit: www.indianaparentinginstitute.org/shyne.asp. If you are a school interested in bringing SHYNE to your location, visit: www.indianaparentinginstitute.org/school-shyne.asp?2. To donate online, visit: www.indianaparentinginstitute.org/donate.asp. To learn more about how IPI serves the community, visit www.indianaparentinginstitute.org.