Our Mission

 

The Crown CARES (Creating A Respectful Environment in Society) program, established in 2010 and revised in 2020, is specifically designed for volunteers and peer ambassadors who wish to promote awareness as a platform for the epidemic of bullying in schools, social awareness, inclusiveness, and social bias, to cultivate a safe environment and most importantly teach skills to develop social responsibility in school-age children, youth, teens and adults. Our platform is a program of Crossroads Youth Center, a 501c3 nonprofit organization that began as a Bullying Prevention program and grew into a much larger issue facing our country today. (You may look under the "Unite" tab for all your resources for bullying prevention and handouts.) Members are trained and given the Crown CARES manual and a separate login to view all our information needed. 

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CHECK OUT OUR RESOURCE PAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON BULLYING PREVENTION, BUT THERE IS MORE........

 

Designed to raise awareness of positive social behaviors, bullying, and harassment prevention and provide practical solutions, the easy-to-follow manual, provided to the participants, provides the general knowledge, research, resources, and practical advice necessary to incorporate steps and measures for your program to effectively promote awareness of bullying prevention and create a safe school environment, workplace, and community.

 

The Crown CARES program outlines the definition and simple solutions to the age-old problem of negative social behaviors and bullying. While there are no grandiose or magical explanations, intellectually understanding the importance of social skills helps to form positive relationships, have conversations, develop appropriate body language, cooperate with our peers, and learn to share and even play together (coexist). Having well-developed social skills also leads to improved mental capacity, cognitive abilities, and good overall mental health.  Developing and maintaining a program in or out of school is what will set you at the forefront of your competition and place you in a reputable place in your community. Our responsibility as adults, community leaders, role models, caretakers, and human beings is to nurture the delicacy of our youth and future. We can only accomplish this by ongoing education and by practicing what we teach, with the youth’s safety and future as the principal purpose.

 

Excerpts from this program were taken from the workbook The Comfort Zone by Meline Kevorkian, ED., Robin D’Antona, ED. and Deb Landry, Maines Best Practice Manual, and Sticks Stones and Stumped children’s book and workbook by Deb Landry, and the Unite Against Bullying Program by Deb Landry, published by Bryson Taylor Publishing. ​

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The program and logo are research-based and are copyrighted. Crown CARES is free for all people to use.  

 

To request a free visit to your school, function, or program, contact us at

207-838-2146

 

Make a Difference,

The Starfish Story

(author unknown)

 

The following is one of my favorite stories (author unknown) that never fails to inspire me to sustain my belief in what I do as a Christ-follower, regardless of how insignificant it may seem to the eyes of others. 

 

While walking along a beach, an elderly gentleman saw someone in the distance leaning down, picking something up, and throwing it into the ocean.

 

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, picking up starfish one by one and tossing each one gently back into the water.

 

He came closer still and called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

 

The young man paused, looked up, and replied, “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”

 

The old man smiled and said, “I must ask, then, why you are throwing starfish into the ocean?”

 

To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up, and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”

 

Upon hearing this, the elderly observer commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach, and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”

 

The young man listened politely. Then he bent down, picked up another starfish, threw it into the ocean past the breaking waves, and said, “It made a difference for that one.”

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