Eighth-grade students filled out their own business cards as part of an activity created by YWCA officials in association with the AIM initiative. Students were given lessons intended to spark positive visualization of their future. P-J photo by Jordan W. Patterson

Several eighth-grade students were busy creating their very own business cards at Jefferson Middle School on Friday. The activity was designed to enforce a positive visualization for each student’s future.

Through the YWCA and its organization Comprehensive Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (CAPP), created in 2012, Jamestown Public Schools hosted the Project Adult Identity Mentoring (AIM) program throughout its middle schools during the beginning of the school year. Project AIM is present at Jefferson, Persell Middle School and Washington Middle School this year. Project AIM also gives sessions at Westfield Academy Central School. The program impacted 377 students throughout 20 classes during the 2017-18 school year in Jamestown.

Project AIM is a program within the CAPP organization that is contracted by New York state to provide sexual-reproduction education. CAPP is also present in Jamestown High School where they implement the Be Proud Be Protective program. That program focuses on preventing adolescent pregnancy and promoting sexual health for individuals from 10-19 years old.

Separately, AIM hones in on encouraging a positive outlook for students ages 11 to 14 in the middle schools, and while the project discusses sexual education, it focuses less on the topic than the high-school-oriented program.

“(Project AIM) is a program to get our students to start thinking about their possible future selves,” said Taylor Winter, CAPP director. “We try to get them to think about what their successful future may look like and that is completely individual and personal to them so they might look like all different success levels.”

Winter was instructing students along with CAPP educator Tracy Ferino inside Sara Patterson’s eighth-grade classroom.

Project AIM gives lessons specific groups of students in various classrooms over the course of 12-13 sessions. Contributing to a student’s potential success is identifying what courses to take in middle and high school, Winter said. CAPP officials help students decide what classes they need and want to take. Additionally, students are aided in deciding which clubs and activities to get involved with at school and in their communities.

The business card activity is specifically designed to help students envision what their potential future career could look like.

“We are helping them create business cards so that they can learn to market themselves and it’s really that visual piece to help them see their successful future by having one of those business cards,” Winter said.

Not only does Project AIM encourage students to imagine a successful future, the initiative also instructs students on how to not hinder their dream by promoting positive decision making.

“Hopefully they will avoid risky behavior or decisions that would compromise that future self,” Winter said. “We’re trying to get them to safe guard their future by making positive decisions and being around positive influences and identifying those who are positive influences for them.”

Students began this year’s sessions by discussing influential individuals who left behind legacies.

An example used in Project AIM was former President Barack Obama. Winter said focusing on impactful people gets the program off to an empowering start.

At the end of the program, students are awarded leather portfolios comprised of the work they completed over the course of the sessions.

“(Project AIM) is a great way for (the students) to understand what their goals are and also gain some ideas on how they can reach those goals,” Patterson said of her students.

Project AIM finished its fourth week of sessions Friday and has two remaining weeks. This year, the initiative will impact 18 classes in JPS.

As for CAPP, Winter said the effort is focused on preventing teen pregnancy and also assisting teen mothers. Winter said only two percent of teen mothers graduate from college by the age of 30. According to the Center for Controlled Diseases website, only about 50 percent of teen mothers graduate from high school by the age of 22. Teen pregnancy was declining from 2014 to 2015 in the U.S. Since 2007, the decline has been steady, the CDC says. The site attributes the decline to more teens having less sex and additionally using birth control. Despite observing a decline, the CDC states the U.S. is higher than other western industrialized nations. Winter said CAPP works with the Teenager Education and Motherhood (TEAM) program to help current teen mothers graduate from high school.

CAPP’s newest initiative is a partnership with the Chautauqua County Health Department and TEAM that allowed the creation of a clinic hosted in the CAPP building. The clinic provides STD testing, pregnancy testing and various birth control options. The clinic is confidential, needs no insurance and allows walk-in appointments.