ROPE® offers
communities an effective, structured way to integrate and deploy
their resources in the service of youth development. Communities
using this model also have the opportunity to refine and customize
the process to take advantage of their unique diversity and resources.
Through ROPE® young people come to understand
that the community cares and is there to help them grow up
well, and ROPE® inspires young adults to have a deep respect
for the community and the world around them. A key element in the
process is training a core group of 12-15 adults – parents,
teachers, youth workers, and other adults -- as “Guiding Elders.”
High school students can also be guides. These guides become leaders
in implementing the ROPE® process and customizing it to the
needs of their community.
Phase I: 6th Grade, Ages 11-12
Developing the Skills, Mastery, and Healthy Identity for the Transition
from Childhood to Adulthood.
This foundational phase of ROPE® serves to awaken youth and
parents to the major transition that is about to occur, and introduces
the skills and experience necessary for youth to make a successful
transition to adulthood. Children learn how to cooperate, make decisions,
and solve problems, and they develop a sense of confidence and mastery
in their abilities – essential to the formation of a healthy
identity.
It focuses parent, student, school and community attention on the
separation of children from their elementary school experience,
on the beginning of their separation from parents, and on the importance
of this transitional time in youth development.
An award-winning 21-hour life-skills curriculum prepares students
for the complex challenges ahead and helps build their confidence
and resiliency. This curriculum includes increasingly difficult
physical and cognitive challenges that provide teachable moments
to convey and implant essential life-skills for this age group.
It teaches decision-making and problem solving, how to cooperate
with others, how to effectively manage peer pressure, how to be
responsible, and how to reach for challenging goals. It is effective
at increasing the student’s sense of mastery, competence,
confidence and sense of community. This curriculum, customized to
each community, also provides a vehicle to introduce important ingredients
for having healthy fun, thus setting the stage for Phase II.
Phase II: 7th-8th Grades, Ages 13-14
Exploring Positive Leisure Activities
The second phase focuses on connecting youth in middle school with
positive leisure time activities and allows them to experiment and
discover which activities are most important to them. It sets a
structure for both the students and the community for connecting
youth to the particular resources of their community.
Building on the foundational skills acquired in Phase I, students
develop a contract with their parents, school, and community agency
representatives to experiment with positive recreational activities.
School personnel and community leaders then create opportunities,
and guide participants toward pro-social community involvement.
Phase III: 9th-12th Grades, Ages 15-18
Giving Back to the Community
The final phase focuses on the important adult value of giving
one’s self to others through community services. Once again,
parents, the school and the community collaborate to create opportunities
for youth to become involved in community-service activities. It
gives them the opportunity to demonstrate newly acquired physical
and psychological skills and transfer them to community-based settings.
High school students also have the opportunity to mentor younger
students as they go through the ROPE® process. These “senior”
ROPE® students function as co-facilitators for Phase I skill-building
activities, or as mentors in Phase II to support students’
transitions to middle and high school, impacting school climate
and guiding them to healthy recreational activities. This allows
teenagers to experience the value of building and maintaining a
reciprocal community.
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ROPE®
Curriculum