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Register for Next Step!
What Is Next Step? Workshops are designed to foster acceptance and examine new philosophies for stopping teen violence and isolation, ending social oppression in schools and communities, and a model for socio-emotional learning. Challenge Day addresses issues such as stereotypes, teasing, youth violence, racism, gender roles, as well as substance abuse. Next Step workshops takes the participants further, to explore their own experiences in social oppression. As a result, they become more valuable resources in their community, and practice the principles of Challenge Day in their everyday lives. Attendees at Next Step workshops:
- increase compassion and empathy for teen issues
- support the emotional health of young people
- increase interpersonal communication skills
- explore their own experience in different forms of social oppression
- experience the honest expression of their own and others' emotions
Pictures and Quotes from Next Step 2006!
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Rich Dutra St. John, Chairman of the Board for Challenge Day and Next Step Leader, spent a portion of one day with Emmett Walsh of Key Largo as a volunteer model of what happens to a man’s heart during his most impressionable, developmental years.
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| In an unusual case, three members of the same family attended Next Step training together. Judy Greenman, who is the founding director of Monroe Youth Challenge Program that originally brought Challenge Day to Monroe County, is sitting with two of her daughters after a touching moment they shared. |
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| After three intense days of being transparent and learning new skills to make better choices, this group of 2006 Next Step graduates in Marathons snuggles like a family because that’s what it feels like to go through this process together. |
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| Throughout Next Step each attendee is randomly connected with a partner for the whole three days. Here, Kelsie Bernardin of Islamorada finishes an original rap song she wrote and performed for her buddy Michele Sutter of Tavernier. |
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| Select members sit in a small ring of chairs in the middle of the room with their eyes closed while other members of the group whisper affirmations to them. The activity goes on until everyone has had a chance to sit in the circle and receive the “angel whispers.” |
"...Next Step has totally changed my life for the better and altered my perspective on the world. When I first went to next step, it reminded me of challenge day... But I realized soon enough that I was really going to be stepping out of my comfort box...Next Step is a three day workshop, not just the 6 hour school day activity, and we soon learned a lot more about each other then we ever thought we would.
...truly, you
have to be there to see and feel the love and understanding; also
the trust that radiates around the room..."
~Xotchil
"I’ve been able to talk people that love me and
support me in ways that I’ve never been able to before. After Next
Step, I had a chance to get real with my best friend, Javier. He
really opened up to me, and it made me feel amazing and that the
things I learned at Next Step not only applied to the people in the
room, but in the entire world. I was able to share and get out some
of my worst feelings that I had never told anyone about before, and
it was great just to get them out."
~Reggie
"Next step ...has taught
me to open up more ... That I don't have to try to fit in, just be me and to be
real. Next step has also taught me not to judge other people...there
are people out there that love me want to
help me to become me, not what other people wants me to become. "
~Anonymous
