Media Article Relating to Op Snowball . . .
The News-Gazette, July 21, 2006
Guest Editorial: The News-Gazette, April 30, 2006
Guest Editorial: The News-Gazette, July 1, 2005
Article: The Hub, July 21, 2005
Champaign
County Operation Snowball: Helping teens help each other
By Heather Sullivan Zydek
Caleb Curtiss first came to Champaign County Operation Snowball a blue-haired icon of rebellious teen-hood. By the end of high school, he became a part of the CCOS teen staff. Now Curtiss, a 23-year-old adult staff member of CCOS, has turned his energy toward the cause of helping high school students through those rough years of choices and changes.
He's not your average youth group leader--but Curtiss, who spices his language with more than a few four-letter words, speaks in a way the teens at CCOS understand, mixing a tough-love cynicism with gentle counseling skills that show the kids he's ready to listen.
"Without Snowball, I don't know where my life would have gone," said Curtiss, who joined the staff of CCOS as the "Tuesday Night Coordinator" in January of 2004. "This is kind of paying back a debt that was certainly due."
Operation Snowball was founded in Rockford, Illinois in 1977 by the Illinois Teenage Institute as a substance abuse prevention program for teens. Snowball groups now exist in a handful of states and countries, but Illinois is still Snowball's central location, with nearly 100 chapters statewide. The local Champaign County chapter of Operation Snowball was founded in 1979, according to Rob Silverman, a private practice counselor who serves as the executive director of CCOS.
The goal of the local chapter, Silverman said, is to teach teens peer counseling skills at weekly group meetings and semi-annual retreats that the student participants can then bring to their high schools, inciting a "snowball effect."
"What Snowball tries to do is create positive problem-solving skills, so teens can prevent themselves from getting into trouble," said Silverman. Silverman and his staff have designed an interactive program that uses workshops, speakers, self-awareness exercises and more to help teens succeed in life. While Operation Snowball as a whole has a focus on substance abuse prevention, for the local chapter, the goals are much broader.
"From the day we opened, we got painted with this brush that we were a substance abuse program," said Silverman, "and that's not really true. We are about more than that. We've always tried to have a program that addressed the whole person."
The local chapter of Snowball meets at the McKinley Foundation on Tuesday nights from 7 to 9 p.m., year round. Teens come from several area schools. They are preppies, punks and jocks, 14 to 18 year olds from a diverse mix of cultures and subcultures struggling through a variety of problems, from substance abuse to gang involvement to poor school performance and dysfunctional home life. They are referred by parents, high schools, mental health centers and private counselors.
At a Tuesday night meeting in early January, 15 youths and 6 adults braved icy rain to come to the McKinley foundation for a CCOS gathering. Each weekly meeting has a theme, and the theme of the night on this occasion was the "family sculpture." Leader Rob Silverman spent the first hour, the "large group" portion of the meeting, asking a volunteer to reenact a typical day in the life of his family, using his peers in the group as actors. This led to a quietly intense discussion among the young participants about family dysfunction.
For James*, the family scenario he depicts is one in which his mother, apparently depressed, sits on the couch all day watching TV and complaining; dad, out of work, hides in another room, watching TV by himself. The boy's preteen sibling stays on the sidelines, occasionally bothering mom for attention. James told the group he mostly avoids the house himself--he is hardly ever home. All the while during the student's reenactment, Silverman asks James and the other teens probing questions. Teen members throw their two cents into the conversation, offering advice and helping James find words to express his feelings.
After about 30 minutes, Michael*, a quiet boy who has only been to one Snowball meeting before this, speaks up. His voice is barely audible at first, but as he continues to speak and gets louder. Michael has just been released from a correctional facility. His mother, a crack addict, abused him throughout his childhood, then turned him into the police for a crime he didn't share with the group. He relocated to the area recently and now lives with his biological father, who is trying to help him pick up the pieces of what remains of his traumatic childhood. As he shares his story of abuse and neglect, along with his own personal failings and struggles at school and at home, the others listen. He shares bursts of intensely private information about himself, then gets an impulse of self-consciousness, wondering if the group is responding. "Ya'll said this is the place let all your emotions out," he said, telling the group that his experiences were nothing "nice or pretty."
"Are you going to let it hold you all down?" asks one girl.
"It ain't 1-2-3, let it all go," he replies.
"Do you want to be different than your mom?" asks Caleb.
"It's going to be better," he says." I ain't going to be no crackhead in the street."
"This is what Operation Snowball is all about," said Silverman. "It's brave of you to share. What can this program help you with?"
"I don't know," said Michael. "I hope it does something good."
After the intense large group discussion, the participants split into small groups. James and Michael both end up in the same small group, with Caleb as their leader. In the group, Caleb spensds about an hour going around the room in a more intimate setting, asking each teen to share the high and low points of their week. One girl shares her boredom and frustration with school and career options. Another boy talks about a recent break-up with a girlfriend. James shares the news that his dad recently found a job. Another girl talks about a new boy she met. Michael vents about his mother and the difficult life he had with her.
"I want people to love me," says Michael, a stony, angry look on his face that hasn't budged since the meeting began. "I'm not used to emotions. Not used to love."
After an hour in small groups, the large group reassembles and the emotionally charged meeting ends with a ritual--the participants come together in a circle, their arms around each other. "Good luck!" they all shout in unison, just before the group breaks apart.
For Silverman, the open, honest conversation of this meeting is exactly the kind of recipe for success that makes Snowball a worthwhile program. And it seems to be working--over the nearly 25 years CCOS has been around, teens have continued to show up.
"Snowball is voluntary," Silverman said. "Nobody has to be there."
And there have been success stories over the years, like those of Caleb Curtiss, among others. Curtiss spoke of another teen who came to CCOS a few years back, a gang member and drug dealer who left CCOS a straight A student. He's now in law school. "If he hadn't changed he would be dead or in jail," Curtiss said.
Despite the apparent small-scale success of the local group, evidence of their good work has only been anecdotal up to this point, which is why they lost major funding a year and a half ago, when both the Children Home and Aid Society and the United Way withdrew about $23,000 worth of funding from the group. The Children Home and Aid Society closed their doors and could no longer fund CCOS; United Way wanted hard data of CCOS's success, arguing that they would no longer fund CCOS until the small organization made itself more accountable. In response to the financial cutbacks, CCOS restructured itself; they rebuilt the board of directors and rewrote the bylaws. And with the help of a UIUC doctoral student, CCOS has developed ways of evaluating the experiences of teens involved with Snowball that tracks six different behaviors: school grades, delinquency, depression, self-esteem, substance abuse and sexual activity.
Silverman hopes that over time, the statistics they gather will reveal what they feel the anecdotal evidence already has: that Operation Snowball continues to live up to its goal of improving the lives of teens, teaching them four skills vital to healthy growth: self-awareness, self-expression, responsible decision-making and peer counseling abilities.
Things are looking up for this under-funded nonprofit. They still receive funding from private donors, and the Champaign County Mental Health Board has stepped in with financial help. Silverman added that the United Way is very supportive of CCOS, and if they can continue to develop a form of accountability that proves their success, they may be able to get funding from United Way again in the future. Silverman is hopeful that things will turn around for CCOS financially.
"There are not many programs that work with this specific population," he said. "Off the top of my head, it's hard to identify what comes close to doing what Snowball does for teens."
To
learn more about CCOS, visit them online at www.champaignsnowball.org.
*Names
of teens have been changed.
END
Article: CU CityView, December 2002
Operation Snowball by Holly Rushakoff
The Schoolhouse Rock-like sketches on the Operation Snowball brochure harken to the organization's roots, the time when Rockford, Ill., students coined Snowball in 1977. Whether it's 1977 or 2002, though, a teenager is still a teenager, and the same mission, "a community of caring" is at Snowballs' core. "There's a difference in clothing styles, in music, in the words used ... but the topics [Operation Snowball discusses] are the same," said Robert Silverman, the teen staff training coordinator. Having been on the staff since 1980, Silverman can attest that subjects like communicating with parents, stress, drugs/alcohol, sex, social responsibility and goal-setting still need to be dealt with for teens.
Operation Snowball is a voluntary program where teens help each other by listening to and accepting each other. "We call ourselves a prevention program," Silverman, a licensed clinical counselor, clarified. "We're not a treatment program." But they do direct those in need to the proper resources. Snowball teaches teens skills to enable them to stand up to problems, and emphasizes the importance of honesty and communication. They meet Tuesdays from 7 to 9 p.m. at the McKinley Foundation, 809 S. Fifth, Champaign. During the first hour, they have a "feelings whip" where each person shares how they are feeling. ("Its alright to pass; the goal here is to feel safe," Silverman said.) The second hour is devoted to small group discussions led by a teen staff member. "We dont censor what the teens talk about," he said, and "sometimes the talks get raw."
Silverman pointed out that the Champaign chapter is different from the other Illinois Operation Snowballs. Rather than recruiting teens who are already successful in their school, "we gather up the alienated kids and turn them into leaders. ... We provide a positive peer group for those who dont fit in, who can't stand social cliques." Silverman said many graduates of Snowball have since become local teachers and social workers. Unlike most Snowballs that are a program of a school or a substance-abuse agency, the local chapter is a free-standing organization. This enables it to offer semiannual weekend retreats. The teens are immersed for three days in communication skills. Not only do they learn self-awareness, but also community-awareness and family-awareness, hence the mission, "a community of caring."
END
