Raising healthy teens

In Waterdown, a grant of more than $200,000 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation is helping to fund a campaign aimed at raising healthy kids.

The campaign involves 40 developmental assets, believed to help kids stay on the right track, and grow into successful young adults. The assets were identified by the U.S.-based Search Institute after interviews with thousands of teens about what they had and what was missing in their lives. The assets aren’t revolutionary. They’re things adults and teens have lost because of our busy lives.

Penny Deathe of Focus on the 40 puts it this way: “We’re always running back and forth, and somewhere we’ve had a little bit of a disconnect with our youth so we need to kind of plug back in and figure out how we can make sure that they know. And it’s not just parents, it’s that they say every child should have four or five mentors, caring adults in their lives.”

The funding will cover the cost of a major awareness campaign about the 40 assets, as well as a training program for community members – everyone from educators to police officers.

Video: Maria Hayes reports: