HOUGHTON – Communities That Care (CTC) has moved into the second phase of implementation in Houghton and Keweenaw Counties, and Ginny Machiela, CTC coordinator, said the formation of the Community Board is complete, and its members are anxious to move ahead.

“Everybody seemed very enthusiastic and excited about the potential, especially once you start learning the science behind CTC and see how well it works,” Machiela said. “You could definitely see how excited the board members were to give it a shot and see where this is going to go long term. There’s real potential for a community change, and I think that’s what gets people excited.”

CTC is a prevention system which employs proven, community-change processes for reducing youth violence, alcohol and tobacco use, and delinquency through tested & effective programs and policies. Using a proven five-phase change process as its base, CTC promotes healthy youth development, improves youth outcomes, and reduces problem behaviors.

“What CTC does is it looks at 20 risk factors that are evidence-based. We look at a specific set of risk factors that researchers have proven contribute to problem behavior,” Machiela said.

These risk factors can come from the community, the family, from school or from an individual or peer. They can include things such as availability of drugs, media portrayals of a given behavior, low neighborhood attachment and community disorganization. Factors can also include a family history of problem behavior or a family conflict, as well as a host of other contributing factors.

The first phase of the project was the Key Leader Orientation, Machiela said. The second phase was to organize the Community Board.

“And those are the people in the community who are actually going to do the work of the CTC.”