Spotlight on Siouxland CARES Coalition!
Siouxland CARES is a community coalition in the tri-state Sioux City area, which is comprised of 370 volunteers and three staff members. Our vision is to empower our community members to help make Siouxland a safe and healthy place for our youth. We are working to improve our community by helping young people to make healthy choices about substances by strengthening protective factors and reducing risk factors.
One protective factor we aim to bolster is "rewarding prosocial community involvement." We address this through coordinating volunteer opportunities for our elementary, middle school, and high school youth participants. So far in 2021, Mayor's Youth Commission and Young Ambassador members have contributed around 2,500 hours of volunteer work in the community. During our annual survey of youth participants, many students expressed enjoyment around volunteering: "I'll remember how I made a positive impact in the community which then contributed to making myself feel better about the impact left."
Another protective factor we work to enhance is encouraging young people to have "healthy beliefs and clear standards." We fund and oversee the BASICS program at Western Iowa Tech Community College and Briar Cliff University. This program provides personalized feedback based on an online program called eCheckup To Go. Students who receive alcohol citations on both campuses use the results of their eCheckup to Go while receiving BASICS motivational interviewing sessions with campus counselors. The combination of the online program and counseling sessions help these college students to identify their personal health standards and impact their perception of substance misuse.
We have also aimed to enhance having "healthy beliefs and clear standards," by providing educational programming about substances, mental health, and bullying during community presentations. One parent attendee shared, “I'm so glad my husband and I were able to sit down with our son and listen to this. We had questions for him and he also had questions for us. Great family conversations.”
Along with the above-mentioned programs, Siouxland CARES has been busy with the following activities: we added a Diversity Equity & Inclusion Committee, held monthly Advisory Board meetings for local professionals and concerned citizens, continued the BeSomebody media campaign, implemented alcohol and tobacco/vape compliance checks, disseminated youth and parents surveys, and facilitated the community data collection for the local Source For Siouxland Initiative.
Anyone with questions about the efforts of Siouxland CARES is more than welcome to reach out to Executive Director Rachel Lundgren at SiouxlandCaresDirector@gmail.com .
Thank you for all the work you do and have a wonderful holiday season!
(Thank you, Rachel Lundgren, for telling us about Siouxland CARES!)
