If imitation is the highest form of flattery,the Wyman Center’s Teen Outreach Program, earns TOP honors nationwide for its evidence-based approach to teenage pregnancy prevention and building the skills in male and female youth to improve their lives in other important areas as well – school completion, personal responsibility, work ethic and service.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Adolescent Health recently announced 17 recipients of $25 million in annually renewable, five-year grants for organizations replicating St. Louis-based Wyman’s TOP program, which has been proven through rigorous evaluation to reduce teenage pregnancy, behavioral risks underlying teenage pregnancy, or other associated risk factors.
The 17 providers will partner with St. Louis-based Wyman to deliver the Teen Outreach Program (TOP) in their communities.
Wyman will manage, train, certify and support the new TOP programs and monitor their performance to ensure positive outcomes for teens are realized.
President and CEO of Wyman Center, Dave Hilliard, describes the awards as “an exciting opportunity that will positively change the life prospects of the teens and through them their communities.”
Through the most recent partnerships, TOP will reach at least 156,000 additional young people nationwide over the next five years, with significant presence in Florida and in Chicago.
Even though its national network is growing, Wyman Center still considers direct service to St. Louis teens as its most important work.
“We provide our young people with the right types of supports and activities to have healthy relationships with others, navigate risks and opportunities to be productive in work school life and all that it involves,” said Allison Williams, senior vice president of programs at the Wyman Center.
As an 11-year-old, Demarco Dickerson of St. Louis heard about activities of the Wyman Center years ago from relatives other kids in the Clinton Peabody housing projects and neighborhood in St. Louis where he grew up. “I just wanted to try it out – it was something everybody was talking about.
They said we talk about a lot of stuff and we do a lot of things,” said Demarco Dickerson. “It was something interesting … it taught me a lot and helped me with my job ethics and taught me about a lot of different diseases and abuses; building relationships and bonds with your family and making good decisions.”
Some of the good decisions he has made as a result include not caving in to peer pressure or just hanging out and doing nothing.
Dickerson said TOP kept him from having kids of his own by keeping him busy.
“It combines weekly curriculum around goal setting, values clarification, relationships, decision-making, problem solving. There is also an adolescent health and sexuality component to that,” Williams said. “It combines those weekly activities with the same peer group and the same caring facilitators throughout the course of the school year with getting people involved in community service learning.”
