Imagine that you're a busy parent, teacher and tutor at an after school program.  It's been a long week at home. Your seven year old hasn't been feeling well and your 12 year old daughter got in a fight with her best friend.  You have just finished up a big project at your other school for parent teacher night and now you've arrived at your second job, a tutoring session that you facilitate for some students at your church.  There are a wide range of kids at the center and while you are working one-on-one with one child, you see and overhear a group of other kids who are supposed to be working independently teasing one of the other kids for being a "SPED" and "gay."  You feel like you should intervene or get help, but everyone is busy and you'd prefer to just finish up your day to get home to your own kids without winding up staying late to talk to your boss and other kids' parents about what happened.

This is one of many situations that the RESPECT actor educators and I work through with our adult participants in conversations and interactive role play during our adult workshops. The situations are real life - they reflect real conflict and real challenges. The challenges are provided by the participants who help problem solve through role play and discussion the various ways they can make a positive impact in a difficult situation.

In this situation many suggestions and options were "tried on." Some are as follows...

Earlier this month, RESPECT traveled to ESU 7 (a region surrounding Columbus, NE) to provide 20 programs over the course of a week.  This is part of an effort funded by The Kim Foundation which addresses mental health and suicide prevention.  The programs provided during that week are the first installment of a two-part prevention and intervention program by RESPECT for locations outside of the Metro Omaha area where programs such as RESPECT's are less available.