Alabama State University News Sep 29, 2010 ASU Leads Initiative to Help Families, Students Succeed More than 100 family members and volunteers came together on the ASU campus this week to share a meal and learn more about the importance of family togetherness. Just how important is it for families to sit down to dinner together? According to experts, the family meal is the key to keeping young people off drugs, out of gangs and on the road to success. That's why hundreds of families in the Montgomery area participated in Family Day -an opportunity to share a family dinner and become part of a larger effort to bring back what some say is a dying tradition. "It is very important that parents come together with their kids every night." said Dr. Cheryl Plettenberg, chair of Alabama State University's Health Information Management Department and one of the organizers of Family Night in Montgomery. "Parents and kids need to take the time to sit down and talk to each other and parents need to listen to what their kids have to say." Plettenberg said statistics indicate that the family meal is a powerful means of assuring students' success in school and in life. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), 74 percent of students who eat dinner with their family have a better success rate against drugs, dropping out and staying out of gangs. ASU hosted one of the Family Night dinners in the banquet room of the Dunn-Oliver Acadome on Monday, Sept. 27. More than 100 family members and volunteers came to share a meal and hear about the importance of family togetherness. The University's first lady, Wanda Harris, welcomed guests to the event by stressing the need for families to talk to one another face to face. "We tweet, we text, we email. We need to revive the vanishing art of conversation. We need to talk," Harris said. The University's involvement does not end with the initial event. Plettenberg said ASU will launch a Family Youth Initiative (F.Y.I.) program in November. She helped to establish a similar initiative in Michigan prior to moving to Alabama. Plettenberg said more than 16,000 young people are involved in the Saginaw program with a total of 879 volunteers serving as mentors. She hopes to see the local program grow to similar numbers. "I'm hoping that what we started here at ASU becomes a statewide initiative involving families not just in Montgomery, but throughout Alabama," Plettenberg said. ASU students, faculty and staff will serve as FYI volunteers. Volunteer efforts will be organized through another new initiative called ASPIRE (Amazing Students Putting In Resilient Effort), a dropout prevention program headed by Cynthia Handy. "I am very excited about the response our volunteers received at the dinner," Handy said. ASPIRE volunteers will tutor, mentor and conduct motivational activities." ASPIRE will partner with local middle and junior high schools to provide mentoring for students. Jefferson Davis High School was the first school to sign up. Anthony Thomas is a Jeff Davis ninth grader. He hopes ASPIRE will help him achieve his goals in life. "I think the program will help me pull up my grades and it will help me become a better person," Thomas said. For more information on the ASPIRE program, call 334-229-6796. To find out more about the Family Youth Initiative, call 334-229-5058. SANDRA M. PHOENIX Program Director HBCU Library Alliance sphoenix@hbculibraries.org<mailto:sphoenix@hbculibraries.org> www.hbculibraries.org<http://www.hbculibraries.org/> 404.592.4820 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis) Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org<http://www.lyrasis.org/> Honor the ancestors, honor the children. Register now http://www.hbculibraries.org/html/meeting-form.html for the October 24-26, 2010 HBCU Library Alliance 4th Membership Meeting and the "Conference on Advocacy" pre-conference in Montgomery, AL. The Pre-Conference and Membership meeting are open to directors and other librarians.