NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Dawn Spragg’s job gets more challenging every day, but she knew it would.
As the creator and director of Teen Action and Support Center, Spragg has put her bachelor’s degree in psychology and master’s degree in counseling to the test working with Northwest Arkansas teenagers.
Spragg along with program director Rachel Osborn-Cox are working to identify and fill the needs of teens - specifically in the area of community service and volunteerism.
“A lot of people don’t realize how great teens are because all we ever hear about is the bad stuff,” Spragg said. “Kids know that’s how they are viewed - troubled or lazy or something like that. But we want kids to know that there are a lot of adults that think they’re awesome.”
Spragg’s mission is to let teens prove how awesome they can be in the community.
“Kids want to be involved,” Spragg said. “They just need to know how. That’s where we come in.”
Teen Action and Support Center helps teens find community service opportunities whether it is mandated by the courts, voluntarily used to offset traffic fines, used asa resume builder or if they just want to something to do, Spragg said.
Just days before their only fundraising event of the year on Saturday, Spragg, Osborn-Cox and part-time employee Ashley Mills scurried around a remodeled house at 2525W. New Hope Road in Rogers that serves as Teen Action’s headquarters, making final preparations. Folded tables and cases of bottled water sat on a rampleading to the entrance of the building, while Mills sorted T-shirts and Osborn-Cox made last-minute plans on the phone.
Nearly 400 people participated Saturday in the Tour de Fun, where they could enjoy a 50-mile or 25-mile bicycle ride, a 7-mile family friendly ride, a 3-mile walk/run or a 1-mile family friendly walk/ run/ride. Spragg hoped the event will raise about $20,000 for the program, which is a privately funded 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
While raising money, the event not only gives Teen Action a chance to flex its volunteer muscle - about 75 worked the event - but also provides exposure.
“We want to have more of a presence, especially in schools,” Osborn-Cox said. “Over the past two years we’ve built our presence, and most people in the nonprofit sector know who we are and what we do, but we’re still working on the general public.
“A lot of people in the community are still trying to figure us out.”
To Osborn-Cox, who graduated from Rogers High School in 2002 and the University of Arkansas in 2010with a communications degree with an emphasis on family mediation, the visibility of the program was very important.
“I remember driving by and seeing the sign go up when they were doing construction on this place,” Osborn-Cox said of the converted house. “I wanted to be a teacher, but teaching opportunities are very limited in Northwest Arkansas, but when I saw that sign, I got very excited because I thought this would be a perfect fit for me.”
Osborn-Cox has seen her work with teens pay off.
Johana Orellana, 18, of Rogers entered the program as a way to satisfy traffic fines in February, but has since decided to continue working with the program and used a letter of recommendation from Osborn-Cox to land a scholarship to attend Crowder College in Neosho, Mo.
“It is actually a lot of fun,” Orellana said. “You get to interact with other teens and just other people in general.
“Everybody seems so real and they really do care about you and what we’re doing.”
Orellana can’t help but laugh while recalling one of her assignments.
“We worked at a warehouse in Springdale sorting clothes and that was fun because we ended up playing dress up and all kinds of stuff,” she said.
Now Orellana has become an advocate for the center.
“I tell other people they should come to TASC,” she said. “A lot of kids have said they’ll come and work with me. I plan to keep working with them even while I’m in college.”
Orellana said she plans to major in occupational therapy.
“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do,” she said. “But after working at TASC and talking with Rachel, I’m convinced that’s what I want to do.”
AREAS OF NEED
Spragg and Osborn-Cox have developed four programs targeting areas they’ve identified as needs for teens and their parents: “In Service,” “Counseling services,” “First Steps” and “Mary’s Closet.”
In Service has been the most active part of the program because it connects teens with community service jobs. In the five years since Teen Action opened its doors, more than 280 teens have been a part of the program.
“Some Saturdays we’ll have two or three groups all around town,” Spragg said.
Teen Action has proven useful with teens facing juvenile justice issues, she said.
“A lot of times companies don’t want to take on the responsibility of having a teen do community service at their business,” Spragg said. “So, some teens get frustrated and just don’t fulfill their obligation, which only backfires because they are penalized more and given more time in community service by the courts.
“We’re trying to break that cycle.”
Teen Action locates organizations in need of volunteers like Samaritan House, The Salvation Army and Rogers Parks and Recreation, Spragg said. Volunteering adults provide supervision for the teens fulfilling their assignments.
Court-mandated service is not the only function of Teen Action, Spragg said.
“We don’t care why teens come here, we just want to provide them with the opportunities they need,” she said.
Counseling services havealso been a useful part of Teen Action, according to Spragg.
“At first we were just doing assessment and referring people to places to get counseling,” she said. “But we found that people didn’t follow up a lot of times just because they couldn’t afford it.”
Motivated by the need, Spragg got licensed in Arkansas to provide counseling and contacted other licensed therapists to donate their services to the program.
“Counseling has really had a huge impact,” Spragg said. “We realize parents are just doing the best they can and teens are so passionate that it’s just hard sometimes.”
First Steps provides education and resources to pregnant and parenting teens.
“It’s important for teens to realize that even if they make a misstep or do things they’re not supposed to, they can go on to be great adults,” Spragg said.
A mother of three herself, Spragg understands the difficulty of raising children.
“My last is 20, so I’m done,” Spragg said jokingly. “As a parent you understand that you just have to approach teens differently.
“I say it all the time, ‘No one ever got in trouble for being angry. It’s what they do when they’re angry.’”
Spragg said channeling teens’ frustrations that comealong with adolescence into positive endeavors is a focus of her organization.
“You can’t tell someone to not be angry,” she said. “But you can give them an outlet.”
The center also has found a way to get involved in giving through its Mary’s Closet program, which uses social networking websites to alert the community of physical needs of teens such as clothing, food, housing or other personal items.
“We’ve had a really good response using Facebook and Twitter,” Spragg said. “We post the needs and people bring them by.
“It’s kind of funny that some people think we have an actual closet, but we really appreciate the donations and get them to the kids as quickly as possible.”
Going forward, Spragg hopes to add an educational component to the program to focus more on life skills. As a result of the organization’s growth, Teen Action will be opening a second location in Rogers soon.
“We’ve been really blessed to have private donors that have kept us in good shape and we’ve been purposeful with our grant money,” Spragg said. “People have been really generous and I think that is an evidence that the community cares just as much about these teens as we do.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 17 on 06/20/2010