Trevor Phipps
Due to tragedies raging across the nation, many organizations have tried to come up with ways to prevent future violent incidents, one byproduct of the coronavirus epidemic.
One local group of Woodland Park residents, called New Visions Recovery Solutions ,has joined the fight by combating the problems associated with domestic violence. Their plan mainly involves educating children.
According to longtime Woodland Park resident Nate Wilson, associated with New Visions, the organization helps children in Teller and El Paso Counties with addiction problems and serving as a mentor for children with other issues. The organization this year decided that they wanted to do more to help with the mental health of middle and high school-aged children in the southern Colorado region.
On Nov. 6, the organization plans to sponsor a special workshop aimed at empowering male and female youth. The forum will last from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it will be held at the Community Prep School in Colorado Springs. The event will be open to anyone in El Paso and Teller County age 13 to 18 for a cost of $50. But for those who cannot afford the price, there will be scholarships available.
During the seminar, the organization has plans to help the attendees with several aspects of improving mental health. According to Wilson, the team plans on using various methods to help with self-confidence and having healthy relationships.
The event will be put on by a panel of men and women who have all dealt with their own problems in the past. The panel will tell the students their stories of addiction, and other hardships in order to help guide them in a better direction.
They also plan to show inspirational videos aimed at helping teens with self-confidence. Relationships will also be a main focus during the seminars.
“We are going to have the men and women on our panel talk about what healthy relationships look like,” Wilson explained. “We think it’s important for both boys and girls to know that. We want to teach those girls to empower themselves so they don’t get into an abusive relationship. We also want to teach them not to be abusers too because it works both ways.”
Raelene Howard with New Visions will be in charge of the female empowerment workshop, and she said she will be using experiences from her past to help girls with self-worth. “I think that in society as a whole there is just such a lack of self-worth and there is like an identity crisis,” Howard said. “So really the objective is for us to just empower. We want to show the girls that they can find their worth within themselves and not have to look on the outside whether that be their peers or social media. And, that if they are feeling down or something like that, they can look within themselves to find self-worth.”
According to Wilson, New Visions started out as an organization that just helped people in the Woodland Park and Colorado Springs areas with addiction problems. But then, they started getting several referrals from local probation officers and others to help children with other problems, such as behavioral issues.
The group now serves as counselors for children facing a number of different problems or setbacks.
According to their website, “New Visions Recovery Solutions is dedicated to assisting clients and families in restoring health and a sense of well-being and hope in their lives.” Anyone who is interested in attending the empowerment workshops can sign up at newvisionsrecoverysolutions.com.
