MATURE PLUS III
PROGRAMS
Marriage Appreciation Training Uplifting Relationship Education
Our 15 week interactive curriculum for healthy relationships skills building in multiple key areas.
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Foundations of healthy relationships
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Effective Communication
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Conflict Management
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Dating/Domestic Violence Prevention
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Financial Literacy
The MATURE Plus III Project (MPIII) Serves 1,200 students in school and community sites including 300 higher risk and pregnant/parenting teens (PLUS) each year. MPIII integrates educational strategies that support positive youth development, focuses on life-skills information such as dating violence prevention, domestic violence prevention and budgeting; employs adolescents who share the message of the importance of healthy relationships with their peers; and engages the community in youth appreciation activities.
MPIII continues the high quality marriage appreciation and relationship skills training that MTCI has offered to high school students and targeted high-risk youths for the past nine years. Additionally, MPIII includes a rigorous research design that will provide for evidence of the program’s impact.
Our approach is an educational strategy designed to promote positive youth development through marriage appreciation education with high-school students in Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia: DeKalb, S. Cobb, Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale counties.
HOPE III
Healthy Options for Personal Empowerment Plus III
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The HOPE III Project serves 1,250 students ages 14-19 in the area of sexual risk avoidance education and other services and instruction including as needed case management services over three years. The HP III Project serves to reduce teen pregnancy, birth and STD rates, dating violence, underage drinking and illicit drug use by providing in-school and summer instruction and activities, that will teach the benefits of self-regulation, poverty prevention, healthy relationships, goal setting, resisting sexual coercion, dating violence, etc., utilizing REAL Essentials Advance (REAL) in the metro Atlanta area.
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HP III provides resources and addresses those factors that contribute to their risk-taking behavior, while promoting the success sequence (education, employment, marriage, then children). Social media will also be utilized to further reinforce healthy behaviors.
PEERSUADERS
The PEERsuaders are a group of high school-aged students, ages 14-19 who reside across Metro Atlanta counties in Georgia.
They are trained as peer educators by MTCI’s Peer Manager to facilitate interactive, marriage appreciation, health and wellness educational presentations among student groups and throughout communities that we serve, as well as youth across Georgia in accordance with the Healthy Marriage Initiative Demonstration Grant 93.086.
PEERsuaders will help teens internalize the values presented ~ not just hear the information, not just intellectually process the information ~ but take ownership of the material and put it into practice in their own lives.
Peer educators drive all community events and reinforce the lessons taught in the classroom.