Young Decision Makers Program - Essay Example

Program evaluation plan Problem ment Project DEAMHI is a non profitable organization which provides mental education to the community through the help of professional presentations, support groups, literature and resources. Its mission is to bring opportunities for mental discussion, education and awareness to mental health issues. In this organization, there is a Young Decision Makers (YDM) program which is aimed at providing education to the young whose age range from 8 to 18 years. The main challenges are that most of the students do not return to the training program, new students who show up to the program and not all the students who complete their pre and post tests. Description of the agency and program to be evaluated YDM is a program in the DEAMHI organization which is dedicated to providing education to the elementary (8-11yerars), middle (12-14 years) and high school which range (15-18 years) personal and social skills in addition to drug resistance skills and normative education. This means that this program aim at educating the youth on how to develop personal and social skills such as effective communication skills and critical thinking skills for resisting the peer pressure. It also provides education on drug resistance skills, prevention related information on drugs abuse and awareness of social influences towards drugs abuse. It also instills its learners with the general problem solving skills such as getting the views from both parties to resolve conflict, skills for increasing self control and self esteem skills on how to control anger and anxiety within someone. The main program teaching styles use are through instruction giving, demonstrations, feedback from the learners, reinforcing some policies to the learners, behavior rehearsal and giving assignment to the learners to complete at home during their free time. Need for carrying out this evaluation plan An evaluation plan has to be conducted for it to reaffirm if the program is running well and if not then reasons must be brought up why it is not working well. This will help this organization to know the YDM progress and to know it strengths and weakness. It will also help the program in initiating projects and ideas which will help to improve the YDM further. Through this evaluation plan, one can be able to know if the program should continue running and the reasons why it should continue running or if it should be closed and also support with reasons. The evaluation plan may help to know the advantages of this YDM program to the public and other interested parties through reviewing it. If the public gets information about this YDM program since its a non profitable program, it can encourage potential funders to fund the program to meet its financial needs. Services offered in this program The services offered in this program are psyche education on depression and suicide prevention (Moragne, 2011). This education is aimed at giving the learners confidence and the skills to avoid suicide whether killing themselves or killing other people. This aims at softening learners hearts and providing them with the best options to take when life is so miserable for them or when they have been angered by others. “Substance use prevention” is the other service offered to the learners in this program. This service is aimed at giving this learners tips on how to prevent themselves from drug abuse and ho to advice the drug users to help them stop abusing this drug. It also aims at giving health education on the effects of drugs abuse and their effects on their health (Edelfield and Moosa, 2011). The program also provides education on healthy relationship building. This involves a program on teaching the learners on how to socialize with others freely and how to express ones information accurately. It also equips the learners with the skills on how to accept and appreciate the other peoples views and the tactical skills to argue without resolving into a conflict. It also equips the learners with the adequate skills to adapt to different people’s behavior hence it helps them to relate well with a large range of different types of people. The program also provides education on bullying prevention and peer leader training and service learning. This education helps the learners with the skills to resolve conflict, which include the tactics to solve problems, which would accrue to bullying and skills on how to stop other people from bullying. It also involves giving the learners the right leadership skills to help them to be capable of leading peer groups. Outcome objectives The objectives of this program include the youths will be able to identify different signs of depression and be able to realize that their partners are depressed. This sign, which include anger and others, will help them apply the skills they have to talk to the angered and advice them on solutions to their problems. The other objective is to identify signs of suicide. If are able to identify this signs of suicide they will advice the person on other options to take other than committing suicide, and this may help spare peoples lives. The learners should also be able give advice to others on the risks associated with substance abuse. This will include detailing them with the diseases, which are associated with drug abuse and clarifying the effects of drug abuse to them hence helping them drop the drug abuse habit. They should also be role models. They should also be able to describe the characteristics of healthy relationships such as describing their partners with positive qualities, seeing their partners worthy, respecting their partners and many others. The learners should be able to explain the relationship between bullying and suicide and gain self confidence to be able to face others courageously when advising them or guiding them through the respective skills they have (Meyer, 2012). Measures used for collecting data The method to be used carry out the research is the pre experimental research design which aims at collecting information in what the learners will capture by the end of the presentation. This research was carried out after each and every presentation to determine what the learners have captured by the end of the presentation. This data will be collected by the professional of this program in the class by carrying out interviews and giving the learners questionnaires to fill (Pawar, 2004). How information generated by evaluation will be used This information generated from this evaluation plan may be used by the stakeholders of this organization to determine how the program is running. It can also be used to by the community to know what this organization does and how it is run. The managers of this organization through this evaluation plan will be able to initiate policies and strategies to run this organization better. Limitations of this study The limitations of this study include that there is limited information about this organization, which leaves the researcher with many hanging questions. Most of the learners do not also provide the right information or else they provide unreliable information giving the researcher a hard time to compare the results. References Edelfield, B. & Moosa, J. (2011). Drug Abuse: The Rosen Publishing Group. Meyer, J. (2012). Conflict Free Living: Charisma Media. Pawar, S. (2004). Data Collecting Methods and Experiences: A Guide for Social Researchers: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd. Moragne, W. (2011). Depression: Twenty-First Century Books. Read More