The community is invited to a meeting Tuesday evening that will be about the future of the Pennsbury LYFT program.
The grant-funded program will be the topic of discussion at a meeting set for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the United Methodist Church, 840 Trenton Road in Fairless Hills.
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LYFT was formed in 1995 and actively works with students and the rest of Lower Makekfield, Yardley, Falls and Tullytown communities to ” reduce risky behavior” among youth.
Pennsbury School Board member Gary Sanderson, who is involved with LYFT, recently said the large federal grant that helped fund LYFT for the past decade will expire soon and the program needs input from the community on what to do next. A second, smaller grant for the program will expire in September 2016.
“The plan for Tuesday night is to gather stakeholders and introduce them to something called the Communities That Care (CTC for short) operating model,” Tim Philpot, LYFT’s community outreach director, said. “This is a framework that coalitions like LYFT can use to research, plan and implement activities for community change. It’s not incredibly different from what we are doing now, but will be more flexible, and will allow a broader focus for LYFT.”
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Philpot said the group’s current focus in on alcohol, tobacco and drug prevention. He added that the CTC model “would be easier to use for promoting youth development, character building, and civic/community engagement for youth.”
“We hope to gain stakeholder buy-in for us to begin moving forward toward this model,” he said.
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Philpot provided some of LYFT’s many accomplishments:
In this most recent year (ended Sept 30, 2014) we provided information on a face to face basis to over 4,900 people in the Pennsbury communities, we gave out pieces of literature, and we harnessed 971 volunteer hours. Our prevention messages in mass media was good: Between radio, billboards, newspapers, online posts and ads, PSA’s played, etc., we made over 4.8 million impressions.
Due to the fact that LYFT is volunteer operated, Philpot said regardless of funding the program will continue.
The group is be proactive and continuing to apply for more grants, Philpot said.
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“We have already received one additional small grant and have an application completed awaiting decision for a large grant. On top of that we have nearly 11 months still fully funded. LYFT is strong and will continue!”
Click to access Pennsbury%20LYFT%20-%20Community%20Prevention%20Coalition.pdf
