Stepping up to mentor a young person is one of the most selfless, life-changing things you can do. Steve Larosilliere, co-founder of STOKED (Successful Teens with Opportunity Knowledge Experience and Determination) has made a career of it. It’s no cakewalk launching a non-profit to improve the lives of disadvantaged youth through action sports. But with a 95% mentee retention rate and thriving partnerships with schools, he’s clearly doing something right. We recently caught up with Larosiliere to learn more about how surfing, skating and snowboarding can change young lives.

Why did you leave the largest mentoring program in New York City to start your own program?

I was a mentor myself and the kid I was mentoring at the time lived in a group home and I felt like there was a limit to what we could be doing. I mean, we could sit at a table and do homework, maybe play basketball, go to movies, eat pizza- very basic things. The idea behind STOKED came from wanting to create a new way to connect with my mentee.

How did you get into action sports and how did that catalyze the organization?

I’ve been skateboarding since I was ten, but it wasn’t until I was twenty four that I started snowboarding. I didn’t have the means [to snowboard] when I was 10, 12, 13… it wasn’t part of my upbringing or my lifestyle. I went to prep school [in New York] and was the only black male in my entire grade- even though [my classmates] went on ski trips, I didn’t understand it. That’s how I relate to the kids we work with- it’s not part of their lifestyle. I never even imagined myself on top of a mountain or in the ocean. But when I first started snowboarding I was like, ‘what took me so long to start doing this?’

So you started STOKED with snowboarding and branched out from there?

My original idea was just to do snowboarding and then people came to me with ideas: a pro skateboarder wanted to start a skate program and the same thing happened with a pro surfer. “Hey why don’t we take a few kids and a few boards and go surfing?,” he said. It made sense to add those sports. They balance each other out.

So, what do your kids learn from STOKED and an introduction to action sports?

It’s not enough to just go snowboarding. You have to grow as a person and you need to be able to put the experience into perspective. The lessons I got from snowboarding were all about how to set goals and thinking big and dreaming big and that’s basically what we do with our snowboarding program.

With our skate boarding program, [it's all about] how you interact with your community and environment and how you communicate with others. I realized that a lot of kids don’t know how to communicate- they don’t know how to look you in the eye and carry on a conversation, how to give a good handshake- and skate boarding can take you from one community to another so, how do you appreciate your community and realize that wherever you go, whatever place you occupy is your community.

Surfing was the only sport I hadn’t done before starting STOKED and I started surfing right before we launched the very first program. The water does amazing things for kids. Through our surfing program, they learn respect, trust and understanding. They learn about self and the environment and how to appreciate nature. A lot of our kids had never seen the ocean- any ocean.

We want action sports to be part of our kids’ lives- but not the only part.

What do you look for in a good mentor?

Professionals over the age of 25, and you don’t have to participate in action sports- it’s not a prerequisite- you can be a beginner. We want people who can learn at the same level as their mentee. We have volunteers, proficient in action sports, that come up to be instructors.

What’s your sales pitch to get more people engaged as mentors?

Mentoring is a low cost, easy way for adults to give back and I want to make mentoring fun. That’s what STOKED is doing. If you’re active and you want to truly connect to your community, you should become a mentor, at least for a year. Everyone has time for a friend, and that’s what mentoring is: building a friendship with someone younger than you.

How many kids do you work with?

This year we’ll be working with three hundred high school students in Los Angeles and New York. We also have an after school program where kids learn job skills in the action sports industry. We’ll have four schools in the fall where the kids learn how to work under deadline, teamwork, communication skills and project completion. They’ll also build a skate board after school and receive half of a science or art credit.

Where do you see the organization in 5 years?

I would like for STOKED to advocate for 21st century learning skills, to help close the achievement gap, increase high school graduation rates and lower obesity rates by advocating for action sports.

“It never rains in August,” a parent at Frank Brouillet Elementary in Puyallup, Washington promised me. On Tuesday afternoon underneath ominous rain clouds and atop soggy ground I stood with hundreds of children, parents, teachers, and volunteers to cut a very long and sparkly ribbon and open the school’s new playground. The children, who would be returning to school in two days, raced onto the newly mulched grounds to jump, climb and swing on the primary colored equipment. The first rain drops fell, tentatively at first, and then with more momentum. The kids didn’t seem to mind.

Happy Friday! We’re looking forward to a bit of extra rest during the long weekend and we know a few grantees who could use a day off after all their hard work.

This week the students at Roy Waldron school in LaVergne, Tennessee kicked off the new school year with a brand new playground. Despite heavy rain storms and sweltering summer days, their new place to play was successfully installed before kids came flooding back to school. The entire community is now enjoying the fruits of those many hours spent campaigning.

“It brought our whole community together and let us know what we aren’t in this alone,” says Dr. Polly Pewitt, Roy Waldron’s principle. “There is so much support out there for our school, and all we have to do is reach out for it.”

Check out Dr. Pewitt’s awesome video of the playground construction and be sure to watch to the end to see her and her vice principal enjoying the new slide:

In Madison, Wisconsin, Becky Hall finished off her project by crossing a finish line to cheers. On August 8th, she completed her 10th year of the MS 150 Best Dam Bike Tour, a two-day, 150-mile ride from Waukesha to Madison, Wisconsin. But this year was different. Dared by a fellow rider to raise $10,000 for this year’s race, Hall more than met the challenge.

Thanks in large part to the $5,000 she won through the Pepsi Refresh Project, she raised a total of $21,000 for the National MS Society, which uses the funds both to support research into a cure, and to provide programs and services for those currently living with MS.

Becky returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus last week eager to keep up the momentum. This fall, with the help of the Pepsi Refresh team, she plans to launch a student organization to continue raising money for MS research and to aid affected families. But she’s not stopping there. She’s pledged to raise $100,000 for next year’s race. We wouldn’t bet against it.

As projects wrap up, we’re inspired to see volunteers, project managers and organizations continue to search for creative and ambitious ways to impact their communities.

Check back again next Friday for updates from all over the Refresh map.

A big congrats to Mililani High becoming the first Refresh Project in the Hawaiian Islands!

Like many parts of the country, Tucson, Arizona’s working class Pueblo Gardens neighborhood is feeling the effects of the economic downturn. Unemployment is up and increasing numbers of moms and dads are pounding the pavement looking for work. So who’s minding the kids while parents are out job hunting? For too many impoverished families who can’t afford childcare, the answer is no one. Fortunately, Pepsi Refresh Grantee Tucson Nursery School is stepping up and using its $50,000 grant to subsidize childcare costs for the area’s neediest families.

Diane Fellows, the Chairman of the Board for Child & Family Resources, Inc., the nonprofit that runs Tucson Nursery School, says charitable donations are down and cuts in state funding greatly reduced the school’s ability to provide scholarships for low-income families.

More and more, older children are left home alone or left in charge of younger siblings. Referrals to Child Protective Services are up this year, says Fellows. ”You can’t have a seven or eight year-old watching a two year-old while mom or dad is out looking for a job,” she says.

Tucson Nursery School can serve almost 140 students but Fellows says that with the downturn their enrollment dipped to around 100. For $130 per week per child, the school provides a safe environment, educational activities and feeds them nutritious meals. “They eat. They’re cared for. They’re getting an education,” says Fellows. So far, the school’s given 15 scholarships to the highest need kids. “We’re reserving the Pepsi grant money for when there are no other options to help a family,” she says.

Fellows found out about the Pepsi Refresh Project from a colleague who saw a TV advertisement during the Superbowl. She says the staff at Child & Family Resources divided campaigning tasks and did everything from classic email and Facebook reminders to giving people hard-copy flyers and postcards. Since the digital divide also impacts the low-income community the school serves, they also invited families from the neighborhood to come in and vote on the school’s computers.”

After finding out that the project finished in the top ten, “We had a huge celebration- everyone was ecstatic,” says Fellows. “This money from Pepsi is going to be the one thing that’s going to push us through the bad economy and keep us afloat till things turn around.”

Indeed, things are starting to look up in Pueblo Gardens. Construction’s started on a new business park that Fellows hopes will bring an economic boost to the area. In the meantime, she’s happy to provide the neighborhood’s kids with a safe place to go everyday.

“This grant from Pepsi is allowing the parents to look for work and once they find a job, they can go back to work without worrying about their child,” she says. “We’re just so grateful.”

Photo (cc) by Flickr user ArtBrom

Janet Ballelos is not your average twenty-five year old. The recent Pepsi Refresh grantee and creator of the program Sketches of Memory is a woman on a mission. Barely two years after she was diagnosed with a deadly virus similar to West Nile, Ballelos has made a remarkable recovery and discovered an affinity and empathy for the elderly that few people her age can claim. “I understand what it’s like to feel vulnerable,” she said. That empathy along with her fierce ambition is propelling her forward.

At home recovering from her illness earlier this year, Ballelos saw a commercial for the Refresh Project and felt compelled to apply for a grant. She teamed up with her brother (who runs a small senior center) to create a program that would capture the personal stories of the people who lived through some of this country’s “greats” like the Great Depression and the world wars.

“My program started off with wanting to help improve [the elderly's] mental and emotional health while encouraging teens to share their artistic talents,” she said. “Now it’s a program that could potentially be part of the art department’s curriculum at the local high school.”

Ms. Ballelos stopped by our office last Friday and shared with us that Sketches of Memory will offer service credit for the inaugural class this fall. AP credit is in the works.

“The amount of support I have been receiving over the last month has been incredible,” said Ballelos. “It’s been a flood of networking. It even has brought me back to the walls of my high school. Not only have I realized how far I have come in life, but the progress of my project has shown me how many people share my same passion and how I can create a network of youth and elderly advocates.”

By: Monique El-Faizy, Parentdish

Walking to school in the morning can help children respond better to stress during the day, a new study shows. 

Forty children between the ages of 10 and 14 made a morning visit to the Behavioral Medicine Research Laboratory at the University at Buffalo. Half of them sat in a comfortable chair and watched a 10-minutes slide show of pictures of a suburban neighborhood-simulation of a bus ride and the other half walked a mile on a treadmill wearing a book bag and looking at similar suburban images-simulation of a walk to school.

The children were then allowed to rest for 20 minutes before taking a test that required them to identify color names printed in the wrong color, such as the word “green” printed in blue ink. 

Children who were put through the simulated walk to school in the morning had smaller elevations in their blood pressure, heart rates and perceived stress when given a short exam later in the day than children who had been given the simulated ride.

The group of walkers’ heart rates increased an average of three beats per minute, compared to 11 beats per minutes for the riders, and the riders’ blood pressure spike was about three times higher than the walkers’. The riders’ rate of perceived stress was also twice as high as that of the walkers.

Such stress-induced changes in heart rate and blood pressure are associated with the development of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. 

”We found that 20 minutes of low-intensity physical activity, no more intense than a walk, reduced both children’s perceptions of an event as stressful as well as their bodies’ responses to that stressful event,” James Roemmich, associate professor of pediatrics and exercise and nutrition science and the study’s senior investigator, tells ParentDish. “It was protective against the responses that are risk factors for the development of cardiovascular disease.”

Stress in childhood can affect heart health later on, Roemmich says. “Cardiovascular disease takes decades to develop, and there’s good evidence it begins in childhood,” Roemmich tells ParentDish. “We know that leading a physically active lifestyle is protective against the development of cardiovascular disease.”

Roemmich said scientists don’t know how long the protective aspects of exercise last, so children should be encouraged to be active throughout the day. “It’s just more evidence of why recess is important,” he tells ParentDish. 

It’s not just walking that helps, so if hoofing it to school isn’t feasible for your child, make sure she has several opportunities each day to get moving. 

The results of the study were published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

More from Parentdish

Photo (cc) by Flickr user TheNickster

Home to country’s longest-running free summer concert series, The Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival, the arts have always been important to this close-knit community and continue to play an integral part in the city’s rich civic culture. Grace Stewart Mullen founded the Redlands Community Music Association in 1923, along with the RBSMF.

Mullen, a wealthy resident and ardent patron of the arts, believed music should be accessible to all regardless of their ability to pay for admission. Due to strong leadership, the RCMA and its affiliates have fostered Mullen’s ideals and expanded on her vision for nearly a century. In addition to maintaining the free summer concert series, the RCMA offers free musical arts and education programs for underserved kids in the community- an initiative that will further expand due in part to a $25,000 Pepsi Refresh Grant.

I took a couple road trips to Redlands this month, with Grant Manager Carla Fernandez, to check out first hand the wonderful educational programming and the famed festivities at the Redlands Bowl. At the amazing end-of-summer festival finale, featuring the Redlands Symphony Orchestra, we had the pleasure of awarding the RCMA an additional $50,000 Pepsi Refresh grant for the restoration of The Gables House- a historic home on site at the bowl to be used as a space for music performance, education and fundraising.

Local children from Micah House learn about the art of ballet as part of the Redlands Bowl musical arts education program

Dancers from the Inland Pacific Ballet dance out scenes from THE LITTLE MERMAID

McQuigg Rigal, Redlands Bowl Associate Bryan Hartnell, Carla Fernandez and Pepsi Beverage Co’s Scott Loomis prepare to bake lobsters at The Gables House before the Bowl- special thanks to Scott for supplying Pepsi refreshments for the evening!

The Scene at the Bowl (The Gables House in the background)

McQuigg Rigal and Carla Fernandez (second from right), Pepsi Beverage Co’s Scott Loomis (third from right) and (from left to right) the RCMA’s Marsha Gebara, Marvin Hudson, Beverly Noerr, Jeff  Waldron