{"id":6219,"date":"2012-11-26T12:21:03","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T17:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=6219"},"modified":"2014-01-25T18:10:01","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:10:01","slug":"students-help-to-battle-poverty-and-mental-health-issues-in-trenton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=6219","title":{"rendered":"Students help to battle poverty and mental health issues in Trenton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shuffling through cards, Christina Athineos \u201914<\/strong> drew one out and read aloud what was written on it. In response to what was read, the children present who shared that goal began to raise their hands; a ball of string was guided through each hand and made its way around to form a web.<\/p>\n

The exercise, known as \u201cStrung Together,\u201d was designed to show a connection between the children in sharing similar goals. Athineos and other TCNJ students developed it while working at the Shiloh Community Development Corporation in Trenton, NJ, as part of their class, Counseling and Clinical Seminar: Mental Health and Poverty. The course, taught by Associate Professor of Psychology He Len Chung<\/strong>, required students to form partnerships with Shiloh and PEI Kids\u2019 Comprehensive Juvenile Offender Outreach Services in an effort \u201cto help students gain a better understanding of how poverty and mental health issues impact youths\u2019 lives,\u201d said Chung.<\/p>\n

The students spent 17 to 20 hours with their assigned group and helped develop programs that were then put into use.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe adults in charge clearly wanted our support and ideas,\u201d Athineos said. \u201c(Things) we suggested were put to use almost immediately. It was really rewarding to see our ideas implemented so quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the areas that Jerome Harris, chief operating officer of Shiloh, was looking for help in was improving the self-esteem of the children participating in his program. So Chung\u2019s students\u2014who, Harris said, \u201cBrought a lot of energy\u201d\u2014developed research questions to address that concern as well as ways to track development.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took Shiloh’s mission of improving the lives of these kids and focused it inward, toward improving their self-esteem,\u201d Athineos said. \u201cTo us, it seemed like the kids felt poorly about themselves because they were constantly being bullied at school. We developed activities that highlighted each child\u2019s strengths and made them realize that they were talented individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although her group realized that were was \u201cno easy solution or way out,\u201d and that they could not fix all the children\u2019s problems during their time working with Shiloh, Athineos believes she and her classmates made a positive impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really feel like [we] played influential leadership roles while we were there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shuffling through cards, Christina Athineos \u201914 drew one out and read aloud what was written on it. In response to what was read, the children present who shared that goal began to raise their hands; a ball of string was guided through each hand and made its way around to form a web. The exercise, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":2530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-december-2012","category-on-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}