YCNBR 2014 year in review.
What an incredible, amazing year we've had. Thank you all for the support, encouragement and help reaching out to those who need to hear 'You Can NOT Be Replaced!
links Insurance and Chubb won us $3500
in 2013 & $10,000 in 2014!
Manasquan Sending District Schools:
Chip and Melissa kicked off the year at MES with a follow up the Elementary schools student assembly with a Parent talk for the PTO.
In April they were thrilled to be able to put on 2 Assemblies at MHS. They were asked to come in and be the Pre Prom presentation for the Jr's and Sr's. While Melissa and Chip love to travel to schools and talk with kids, being able to speak at YCNBR's home town school was a special honor. The day was fun, great conversation and a pleasure. There's nothing like an MHS kid!
YCNBR decided not enough people know how great the MHS students and faculty are, so in March the Postive Student spotlight began on Fridays for social media.
Later that month YCNBR did a 7th and 8th grade assembly at Brielle Elementary for students right before spring break.
With the Life is Good Club, YCNBR had a Dodge Ball tournament to raise some money for Squanapalooza . It was a fun day that we hope to repeat this Spring.
In May some of the peer leaders from MHS and some MHS grads helped to put on our Cherish workshop at MES for the 6th grade girls. Cherish is based on empathy, listening skills and being kind.
Melissa Spoke at the Jr National Honor Society celebration and Board member Michael Penkethman came in to talk with MES faculty about personality relationship styles. How to better understand yourself, your peers and your students.
Squanapalooza was awesome with the Life is Good Club taking charge. Over 150 students came out to compete and throw color at Mallard Park.
The MHS Life is Good club rallied again and joined us for an afternoon of filming with team member Erik Massimino. The topics ranged from teen life, partying, the influence of friends, parents, volunteering and the importance of being kind to other people. The films were shown at the Step Back concert in June and in schools for dialog with small student discussion groups.
Over the summer, YCNBR was the official charity for the The Color Run in Englishtown. A charter bus was donated and over 55 MHS students came to volunteer. One lucky student won an ipad mini for coming to help.
This fall, Melissa and Chip joined the Child Safety team to meet quarterly with several other community members and faculty. YCNBR donated tons of Pass it cards to all 7 sending district schools and MHS for suicied prevention week. We designed and sent in Respect week posters thumb print for students to fill out and sent our instagram challenge green wristbands in. YCNBR with Emily's help designed a line of free posters for schools to download for free.
October brought YCNBR to HW Mountz for an assembly to some really great students and then to St. Denis School.
We're ending the year with our local schools with #BeAGift. 31 acts of kindess for December. We do not charge schools in our sending district for our programs, we are able to do this because of your contributions and we are very grateful for that help!
Community:
YCNBR donated a Cherish workshop for the Manasquan 4th grade girl scouts. We also donated a talk to Prevention Firsts Design to Shine group, we connected them through our work with the Prevention Coalition of Monmouth County.
About the same time we attended SAC conference and met some great counselors from the state of NJ. What incredibly caring and dynamic counselors we met at the conference. No one should ever doubt the desire that school counselors have to impact thier child.
YCNBR joined forces with several other community groups and school faculties to help plan a series of Prevention and education nights on the Heroin Epidemic. Emily designed the logo and over 200 people came to the initial training, following 400 for the parent presentation.
From those meetings we saw a need for the messaging to reach the 18-24 year old age group and our team brought in Musician Will Evans for a Concert. With a generous donation from a supporter, the offering of a really cool office space we filmed some of our young adult team stories of Heroin addiction, recover and loss of friends. The films were shown at the Step Back for a Moment Concert in June.
A team of moms from Spring Lake HTS and some former MHS grads ran Tough Mudders Mudderella race for us in May and raised us over $1200. Quinn, Chip and Melissa Volunteered, it was a really fun day! Dont miss it next year.
Melissa was honored with friend Lisa Schenke and Jessi Gregory for the work they do in prevention and awareness in May with Jersey Joes new Charity Miles for Smiles at the Headliner, it was a super fun night with some other amazing people who do fantastic work in the community.
August brought an incredible outpouring of volunteers for The Color Run in Englishtown. YCNBR received a donation from the Color Run for each volunteer we brought. We had over 55 MHS students, 24 RBR cheerleaders, another 12 from Pensaukin HS, 12 from St. Rose and another 24 from Cabrini Womens soccer. Not to mention people we had never met that found us on Facebook or through emails. We are incredibly grateful for everyones hard work and for getting up at 4:30 am to help! We raised over $8,200 at the run.
September left us with the suicide prevention month. We sent Prove it cards to local schools as well as wristbands. We walked with our friend Lisa Schenke on team Timfinite for the ASAP Out of Darkness Walk in Manasquan.
New This Year:
College Chapters and Concerts
Sustainability is always an issue for a non profit. We learned very quickly that the need can over take the mission for the organization. We have since the beginning tried to find creative ways to do this without losing our focus. The Step Back Concert caused a light to go on.
The highest risk age group for suicide and substance abuse is the 18-24 year old age group. What if we started College Chapters, what if we helped bridge students to the substance prevention and mental health groups on campus? What if we brought our films on different topics and musicians to the chapters and colleges and used those concerts as fundraisers for our Jr. High- High School program?
We are sooo excited to launch our college chapters. By January 1st we will have 2 possibly 3 approved and we're moving forward with the concerts and musicians. Emily had the idea while at Cabrini to work with her athletic department to tweak our idea a bit and instead of a concert, we're going to be holding an Olympics for the surrounding colleges and have a YCNBR day in the spring.
We have an awesome team of young adults this year who are heading up the chapters and moving them forward. All of them volunteer and are either college students or graduate students. YCNBR could not be moving forward with out them.
Melissa and Quinn spoke at Monmouth University for a Social Work department teach in day on Boundaries and are hoping their chapter will be up and running in the next month or so. We hope that as we grow we'll expand our mission on college campuses with our speakers, films, music and art.
School Assembly Program 2014
You Can NOT Be Replaced continues to gain movement outside the area of our small community. At the end of November we will have 32,000 wristbands circulating the USA, Canada, UK and Australia.
YCNBR has donted to communites with clusters, organizations having teen event days, memorials for several young people who have passed away and schools with climate issues. We had over 3,000 wristbands go out just the week of Suicide prevention in September, and that doesn't include the 1000 special green instagram challenge bands we had for schools in October.
We have spoken to about 12,000 students in the state of New Jersey since we began and the calendar keeps filling up. This fall was packed with schools all over the state. One school even bought over 150 Tshirts for the faculty and students and the day we came was 'You Can NOT Be Replaced' day. We are thrilled to expand and reach more students. There is nothing like hearing 'I think what youre doing is the beginning to end of pain' from a student! Or to have one reach out after passing a wristband for a new one and telling us the story of how not only the person was moved, but that they were as well. We've had kids in crisis come out of their shell by passing wristbands and guidance counselors tell us there are students our wristbands are keeping alive! How awesome is that!
YCNBR's parent talk is killer.....not very humble we know, but 27 years, 8 kids and 18 years in marraige and family programs gives lots of experiences for Melissa and Chip to share with other parents.
In June, Melissa and Chip went to California for a speakers workshop with the countrys top youth speakers. They also visited their friend Liz Jeressi at 94.3 the point to talk about the Step Back concert and the assembly program.
Emily will graduate this spring and is very excited to expand her new Grace.Kelly.Effect that she began this fall. She wants young girls to know that they can dress in a way that reflects their true beauty and attract the kind of people that will cherish them.
Stay tuned for some really exciting growth in 2015!
We have expanded our board!
Welcome to our new members:
Kim Beyer: Is a Spring Lake HTS resident and mother of her amazingly kind daughter Grace, a Derek Jeter fan and Director of Happiess at Raceway Park in Englishtown. Kim's background is in education. Her heart is as big as the Grand Canyon and she is very excited to help us reach more kids than we ever hoped for using her gifts, talents and wisdom. She has already contributed greatly helping with the Color Run and future event planning.
Mike Penkethman: Michael has been an advisor for YCNBR since the beginning, coming to planning meetings and financial brain storming but has now been officially added to the board. Michael is an excellent speaker and presents to large companies methods of understanding different personality, relationship and communication styles. Michael works with young people and coaches several sorts teams. He is experienced in addiction recovery and offers an insight into outreach and education. He lives in Wall NJ and is the father of 6 children and husband to Allison.
Dr. Jim Louro: Jim lives in Wall NJ and is also the father of 6 children. He and his wife Judy are long time community members. He is a doctor of Chiropractic and offers valuable knowledge in treating addiction and mental health issues through diet, exercise and natural treatments. Jim serves on the board at his alma mater Life University and has been the chiropractor for the national rugby team. He has taught and coached young people and offers his expertise to young people in rehabs as alternative ways to deal with pain. He is a wise and kind soul that is our our latest addition ot our team. We are thrilled to have him.
Kim, Michael and Jim join Melissa, Chip, Emily and Susan Brennan Esq. to complete the board for 2014-2015
36,000 of our passable wristbands are traveling across
the USA, Canada, UK and Australia
and counting....
"No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted" Aesop