Do you have questions about Kidpower Vermont?

Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower Vermont (Kidpower Vermont for short) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching people to use their power to stay safe, act wisely, and believe in themselves. We teach everyday safety skills for use with people we know and with strangers, and emergency-only skills in self-defense. Our workshops are designed to be upbeat, age-appropriate, success-based, empowering, effective, and not scary. Participants learn and practice simple, effective techniques for keeping themselves safe. This approach builds confidence and awareness with safety.

We teach children as young as three in our Starting Strong workshops. We keep the workshops for the youngest children short (up to 50 minutes) and engaging. For families with infants and toddlers, we offer adult-only Earliest Teachable Moment workshops in which parents and caregivers learn how to incorporate personal safety concepts into their family’s life from the start. Parents and caregivers learn tools for nurturing their children’s emotional safety, strong boundaries, and positive relationships.

We teach skills in ways that are designed to be fun rather than scary. We focus on what children need to do, rather than on what the problems are. We do not go into detail about the ways in which people can be harmful to others. No parents have reported increased fear; most parents tell us that their children feel less anxious after participating in our workshops, and that they have better tools for handling fears when they arise.

Our positive approach to learning safety skills is comparable to teaching “fire safety” rather than “burning prevention” or “water safety” instead of “drowning prevention.” We teach “People Safety” skills. We tell our students that we believe most people are good, but that since a few people with problems might act unsafely, we just have safety rules to follow.

Teens participate in our Teenpower or Fullpower programs, which are designed for their age and life situations. With their increasing independence, teens and preteens unfortunately face an especially high risk of violence and assault. Teenpower and Fullpower programs focus on providing upbeat and practical guidance to deal with situations in a way that makes sense to teens. Many parents find that they are more comfortable in allowing increased freedom when they see that their teens have learned Teenpower safety skills.

Many of the young people who come to our workshops tell their adults they don’t want to go before the workshop! Almost all of them have a good time once we get started. Sometimes young people are reluctant to attend because they don’t know what to expect, are fearful, or think they already know everything they need to know.

Adults need to understand that this is a health and safety issue, not a recreational issue, and treat going to the class like other important have-tos. Even if a child understands all of the concepts, this is not the same as having the chance to practice all of the skills needed to follow those concepts. As with other skills, repetition improves competence.

Often, after attending an adult workshop, parents find that they feel much more confident about making this a requirement rather than a choice because they have a clearer picture of what the Kidpower/Teenpower program includes.

Kidpower programs and curricula have been developed and are continuously reviewed to ensure that we provide consistently evidence-based and effective personal safety training and curricula for educators. In our regular participant evaluations, people with direct experience with our services give Kidpower a very high rating for relevance, effectiveness, and competence. In addition, our programs have undergone multiple formal research studies and evaluations by independent evaluation professionals in the US, Canada, and New Zealand. We continue to conduct evaluation studies in order to ensure that our services accomplish our objectives, have lasting impact for our participants, and maintain a high level of quality as we grow.

A well-documented article, “Empowering children with safety-skills: An evaluation of the Kidpower Everyday Safety-Skills Program,” was published in the September 2014 issue of academic journal Children and Youth Services Review, with full public access as long as the study title, journal, and authors are cited. Authors are Assistant Professor Alaina Brenick, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut, Julie Shattuck of Applied Research + Evaluation, Alice Donlanc, Shinchieh Duhd, Professor Eileen L. Zurbriggen, Ph.D., of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The article includes a thorough literature review demonstrating how the Kidpower program “uses best practices in victimization risk-reduction and prevention” and an independent analysis of the findings of “The Effects of the Kidpower Everyday Safety Skills on Third Grade Children” demonstrating the effectiveness of the Kidpower program in teaching safety skills to children.