Ashby Family Care &Support: LEAD Program & Peer Mentorship
AFCS proposes to offer the Learn, Explore, Access, and Demonstrate (LEAD) Program & Peer Mentorship. The LEAD Program provides two tracks: Academic Success & Exploration and Personal Enrichment, Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Life Skills Development. Each LEAD Program track offers a workshop series that assists participants to devel
op self-sufficiency for independent living, by creating awareness and offering guidance to help participants build or strengthen skills to access and use critical resources and supports; to develop and maintain positive and engaging relationships with people in the community; as well as helping participants to achieve their individualized goals. LEAD participants may be paired with a Peer mentor in which both (LEAD participant and peer mentor) will receive facilitated engagement & support from the LEAD Program Coordinator and/or AFCS staff member. The Peer mentors will serve as coaches to support participants in re-enforcing the learning outcomes from each workshop and to support participants access to resources and supports. The Academic Success & Exploration program will include a series of workshops designed to help participants develop or increase awareness and their skills to achieve or maintain academic success based on each participants personalized goals. The workshops will include;
Learning Styles with an Equity Lens; Study Tips & Skills; Academic/Career Technical Program Exploration & Holistic Programs & Supports for Individuals with IDD; Cost & Paying for College & CTE programs; and Individualized & Group Support. The overall goal of the Personal Enrichment & Inclusive Life Skills Development workshops is for participants to build culturally responsive & inclusive awareness and/or strengthen skills to access and use critical resources and support. The workshops will include: Values and Personal Goals; Identity Wheel, Respect for Self and Others; Social Engagement and Communication; and Time Management: and Basic Financial Fitness. The goal for Peer Mentorship is to support and re-enforce the LEAD participants learning and access to and use of critical resources and supports. The Peer Mentor and Mentee can both benefit in five of the following areas of: (1) Competence Positive view of one’s actions in specific areas including social, academic, cognitive, and vocational; (2) Confidence – The internal sense of overall positive self-worth and self-efficacy, identity, and belief in the future; (3) Connection – Positive bonds with people and institutions— peers, family, school, and community—in which both parties contribute to the relationship; (4) Character – Respect for societal and cultural rules, possession of standards for correct behaviors, a sense of right and wrong (morality), spirituality, integrity; and (5) Caring and Compassion – A sense of sympathy and empathy for others.
