Personal Story and Motivation for Youth Work
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White. And today we’re hanging out with a new friend, Ted Huntington. And I’ve been around Ted for a while and I’m so excited to bring to you all that he’s working on. Ted, will you just give a quick introduction of yourself because I know you are like a legend in prevention and in Arizona, but this might be people’s first time chatting with you. So please give me a little background on how you got into prevention and what you’re up to now.
All right. Thank you, Jake. I appreciate that. I’ll try to live up to the legend. You know, I do go back not only with you, but I know two of your amazing presenters relatively well, Tomas and Zion. And I tell you what, from the moment I met them and saw them present, I would always reach out and want them whenever I was setting up prevention and and and doing a different Assemblies and things in schools so hats off to you your team I’m really proud of all of you and thank you for allowing me to be a part of your podcast You know you mentioned hey just share a little bit about yourself here. We all have a story and Our story our testimony and our why you know, why do you do this kind of work, what is it that makes you so motivated and whatnot for working with kids? When I was six, I lost my dad. was a pilot and his plane went down. The only plane crash that really that I think has ever occurred of a commercial airliner in Arizona. And unbeknownst to the family, my mom was mentally ill and he was hiding it. then she started to a try to self-medicate and then got sideways and had some challenges with now the substance, so mentally ill and a substance. And this was back in the 60s. So I don’t know how many of you people listening even remember the 60s or even if you were around then, but there was a 1960 era. And I had two older sisters and things got very challenging.
And my sisters would run away and that’s how they would get away from it. And eventually they ended up in situations where they started their own habits. Eventually they both died of an overdose. I was blessed to go into foster care. And I know that sounds kind of funny to say, but at the time it was something that was very necessary.
And then I was blessed again to be taken in by an aunt and uncle when I hit my junior high era. At about that time, there was different people that started to be placed in my life. I started to get into sports and teachers. So there were coaches and teachers and all these individuals took on these forms of mentors for me. And they started to let me see life differently, see that my hope, my future, you know, that I didn’t have to be a product of my environment, my past, what the prediction would be for me to become. I went on to, met my wife after coming home from a college dent. We’ve been married now for going on 42 years. We have four biological kids. And then we have three that we
Adopted into our family from a children’s home where I was at. I’ll tell you a little bit about that really quick, but So that’s the big picture right life family, you know along the way my first career was law enforcement believe it or not I I became I had two specialties I kind of developed one was training as a training subject matter expert in Arizona law enforcement and then I got into investigations. I was a violent crimes robbery homicide detective. Then after that, after I retired, I went into a full-time ministry. There’s a place called Sunshine Acres Children’s Home in East Mesa for it’s a house parent model for kids that are separated from their families from you know a lot of variety of reasons usually high-risk behaviors that happen with the parenting or guardians, right?
And I became the pastor and director of children services. My wife and I were there for seven years. you know, after that, I connected with a level 13 group home with kids with extreme behaviors and was able to really get a, learn a lot, a great education from the kids and learn about regulating a lot of, you know, the stress in the body and different things like that.
Yeah, and then went into a quick stint working for what they call OCWI. The governor asked for a group that would co-investigate DEA, I mean, DES cases. So I went out on priority one prevention and abuse cases. We would decide if a child needed to be removed or not. And I just didn’t like the enforcement again. You know, it was law enforcement that I went into ministry and it was more like prevention, right?
And then I got into that, it was more like, my gosh, I’m back on the side of having to deal with after the fact. So that’s when I found the Chandler Coalition on Youth Substance Abuse, became the manager of that coalition, created a multi-city, multi-sector task force. We started to go into schools doing different things.
That’s where I met the amazing Tomas, Zion and his father, Jamal, and started really rocking on prevention, early intervention, and then treatment and post-treatment of high-risk behaviors. prevention to me, and you and I have had short discussions, and prevention to me is more than just presenting outlines and delivering facts. It’s about instilling hope and faith in the future. Bringing the essence of bringing our audience into a place where they’re feeling this hope, this past, present, future hope and this belief that their life is amazing, they’re gifted, they’re talented, and they have things to accomplish and they have a bright future. And I just love your approach to that enthusiastic, not saying what you can’t do.
But let’s say what you can do. Let’s focus on these positive things that you have inside of you that are dying to come out that you’re wanting to find. If you don’t get them this way, you’re going to get them that way. So that’s a little bit about my story, my why, and at 60, why I’m still working and shaking to move in this direction.
Yeah, I love it. It’s such a good… Man, I didn’t actually know that about your past though too that grew up and spent some time with foster care, spent some time with family. And I’m so sorry to hear about your folks, you know, like that was part of your story. And that as you went through your career, that you were even able to give back to some of those communities that you were brought up in. That’s very, very special, Ted.
I could see how God’s moving through your story and using every bit of experience and maybe even some pain and things he worked through for you to now be equipped to go and help others. And so it’s really cool that we get to chat and now being in the same exact field, I’m curious at learning a little bit more about your days of coalition building because you took something from being the manager in one community and then getting kind of everybody in this region involved. What do you think were some of the biggest lessons learned about prevention and community building when you were going to do that work and why so many people got engaged?
Vision and Empowerment in Community Work
But I love that question. I think it’s having a greater vision other than just what’s the box that’s given to you. Here’s your coalition. Here’s the different strategies and tasks you’re supposed to do. it’s saying, OK, this is the starting point. And like I say, how could we empower this with the greatest vision and hope in the future? And it’s creating that vision that, hey, we are here to create as great of impact as we can in our communities.
And then I started surrounding myself with people who thought the same. And it just so happened that I was able to get police chiefs, city council members, CEOs, organizations like Not My Kids, others to say, hey, you know what? We all are in the same atmosphere that you’re talking. And we’ve been waiting to join together with others.
So then it was me having a mindset of I need to be an empowering facilitator, not somebody who’s trying to own or guide or direct. And my motto was, we need you, but we don’t want you promoting your personal self. But we need your organization, we need your power to change the direction of these lives of these kids.
So if you want to be a member of our group, you’ve got to be willing to have the greater vision of we are a group moving toward this vision rather than what can you do for my company? then you’ve got to give them things to do and then turn them loose. One of the ways, yeah, go ahead that it brings to mind the importance of mission and vision and that you had mentioned something of getting in touch with the right people. And I would argue you probably attracted all these right people because you were living your mission. And I think people can see it. Just recently, so we just got back from a trip, this beautiful trip in the Florida Keys, we’re working with schools there. It’s like a dream scenario.
And we bring one of our newest speakers. So Zion, if you all know, he’s our mental health expert on the team. He runs our mental health division, who Ted has mentioned. Tomas runs our marketing and media. So Tomas and I have gone in the past. Z is about to have twins, so he couldn’t go. He’s like inspecting any day now. So he sent one of our newest recruits, And at the end of this trip, I asked Miles, like,
What has been your favorite part and what would you tell someone if they were thinking about becoming part of Vive 18? And I was expecting him to say, you’re going to get to travel and see beautiful parts of the country and like have this tip-top bucket list experience because that’s what we just did. But what floored me and made my heart so warm is he said, you’re going to be a part of a mission that’s so much greater than yourself that it’s going to fill you up and you’re going to want to run through brick walls to change the world because you’re a part of a team that wants to do it. And I think Ted, that’s the cool thing about what you just explained to me and it resonated so much. And it’s always a good reminder of the fact that people don’t want a job. They don’t want to volunteer. They want to be part of a life-changing mission. And if you are that person bringing energy to that, you’re going to attract all these amazing people who are ready to put themselves to the side, put their brand to the side and say, great, how do we fulfill this mission and vision? And it’s beautiful.
It is. And if you take that as a, if you are able to encompass that as a facilitator, then you release that to the kids that you’re in front of and that they start to get imparted, you know, with that same excitement. And that’s why I say I like, we call it enthusiastic. We call it, you know, pro-social behaviors, pro, you know, what it is, is it’s truly empowering their gifts, their talents, their desires, and all of these things that are inside of them. You’re finding ways to touch each and all of these spaces, even though they’re all so unique, but because of how you’re doing it, it’s like these spider tentacles going out. And it’s like, you know, I was an athlete, but I can touch bad people, you know? And it’s like you as a facilitator, you don’t have to be this multi-hat person. You just be you exuberating this hope.
Right? This message of hope and a future. And we want to give some wisdom along the way. Right? Because, you know, faith without wisdom, faith without power, which is wisdom, lacks power. Faith without action. Wisdom is the action step. We need to know what to walk toward. We need to know what to walk away from and why we make these decisions. So we want to give those out at the same time. But that can’t be the main main. Right? It has to be incorporated in there because we’ve got to get the, person has to open up their heart and mind first, right? And then once that’s open.
Yes, yeah. Yeah, if they don’t care about the content or they don’t care about the content or don’t believe that they can have an amazing future, then it doesn’t really matter what you share with them. It’s not going to be relevant. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. One of the biggest things I learned when I worked for that level 13 group home were these kids just really didn’t have a positive identity and they had no hope in the future. They couldn’t see past the next five minutes. So working with that group of young adults and then finding workarounds and ways to have these transformational mind changes, you know, was work at the beginning. And I thought, I’m supposed to be here on sabbatical because I left the children’s home to go on a sabbatical in California. And why Lord, did you put me in a group home where this is just, this is stretching me further than I’ve ever been stretched before. And then afterwards you realize, that’s why I went there. You know, so yeah, so this kind of work, the work that you do, the work that of the people that hire you and other prevention. Prevention is much more than showing up and going through a script and just presenting a curriculum. You got to bring it to life. know what I mean? Bring it to life. Yeah.
And that’s, man, we can’t say it enough. I mean, that’s the people who are listening right now is if you, you hear it at the end of every, every episode, but it’s still not enough. It’s like, you are the lifeblood of this movement. If you don’t say yes to this, I don’t know who will. And we’re, we know we’re fighting against companies and forces that have millions of dollars and psychologists on their team to try to do the opposite of what we’re doing, trying to get students to use these products, make money off them and they don’t care if they die or if their parents get mentally ill or any of these things. They’re just making a buck and it does take teams like us doing work together to battle that because that’s what we have. We don’t have the millions and billions of dollars to spend saving these lives. We have each other. So leaning on it is really important. So for everyone who’s listening, if we haven’t said it enough, thank you for doing your work. And Ted, I want to move into something that I think is a gift that you give people in our space. Because you have the background and training and in working with students who have used, you know, on that restorative side, and you also have worked in the prevention side for students who have not used, and we want to keep it that way.
Can you give us a brief overview of how you work with coalitions right now? And then I actually want to dive in and learn a little bit more because I’ve been hearing all about your Thrive curriculum. And I’d love to dive in before we end the episode. Can you start off just by giving us an overview of how you support coalitions in schools right now? And then we’ll dive in.
Vision and Empowerment in Community Work
Yeah, you know, having managed my own coalition helps because it’s like I can relate. So the first thing I like to do is find out, you know, what is their need? And then if they have a need that’s like curriculum, they need to have an ability to get into the schools. They need to have an ability to meet whatever their requirements are on their grant then I do have a section of my company that will even create trainings to trauma-informed. I have a trauma-informed training. I have emotional intelligence training. But two of the biggest ways that I think I partner right now with the coalitions is one, the Thrive program that was able to be created about five years ago. And that’s a, it’s called the Thrive Resilience Program for Teens.
And that thing just has taken off like a rocket because of the things we’ve talked about. I put that together, I put it together. I actually went into the schools and piloted it myself. I would get 200 school and they let me access to 200 students at a time. And I do four classes a day and I’d go in and do one of my lessons. And afterwards I’d stop and say, what did you like? What did you not like? How can I say this better?
And I would scratch it out and change it in the next. I, you know, we rewrote thrive. I don’t know how many times, but we wanted to make, I wanted to, be able to put a product in the hand of a facilitator that could step into any community, any, any youth group, of, know, any community and any youth group of youth and be able to say, I can use my gifts and talents and I can bring this thing to life because.
I don’t have to follow this very strict cookie cutter outline that doesn’t allow me to touch my community or use another activity to make this point come to fruition. Thrive has nine different components that can be done one after another. You can separate them out. I think it’s in I mean, three of the largest school districts in Arizona, plus a number of others, a number of states. New Zealand got a hold of me. There’s a place in England, a place in Ireland, the Cayman Islands, a lot of mental health. A lot of mental health places will use it. Coalitions and schools use it for tier one and tier two. So both, tier one and tier two. And then I have an elevate.
That’s an early intervention that is for tier three. So I don’t have much time we have left, but definitely hit up the website, hit me up. This has been something that started grassroots and just took off. right now it is a, it’s been deemed a promising practice by Arizona access through SAMHSA.
And so it’s grantable. DFC can write for it. There’s a lot of different grants out there that it qualifies for. It’s economical. A lot of times, as you know, in this field, you work with a coalition and here’s my set price, at least for me. And they say, I got 100 students I can get to, but I can’t pay that. I say, yes, it’s a ministry. At the same time,
But so I’m learning to be a better business person through this. I know if I should say that, but to me, business is at first. You got to put the horse before the cart that you’ve got will take care of it.
Well, that’s whole balance is you’ve created something that needs to be in people’s hands and you also have to learn to get compensated so that you can put it in more people’s hands. And that’s the battle every single coalition is facing too, is how do I create sustainability so that when the grant runs out or my time runs out, this continues to impact people without me. And so that’s why I was excited to have you on the show, Tags. I know your heart and I hear I hear people enthusiastically talking about the Thrive Curriculum, how flexible it is, and how since they’re passionate about prevention, that they can infuse their creativity and their stories and their influence into the program and still get the impact that they want to make. And I think that’s the genius behind what you’ve built is every, not every other curriculum, but a lot of other curriculums, it’ll suck the life from the facilitator and just say, just McDonald’s sandwich this. You put the bread, cheese, pickles, bun, whatever, like, and then you do that and you hand it to them. And you’re saying like, no, you’re smart, you’re capable, you’re like, you have a story to tell, you have influence and creativity. Good, here’s the outline, here’s the goal that we’re wanting to do, and here’s some tools that you can use, and it’s flexible.
And so that’s the thing people are talking about, the Thrive curriculum around Arizona and now other states and even other continents, which is so cool. And so, yeah, I love the fact that you’re a ministry mission first person. And I think that’s why this has grown so much.
And you know what’s crazy too about what Thrive has proved to be is you can use the same workbook and you can use it from fifth grade all the way through 12th. And they do. They do. Right now, Tucson Unified School District is doing it in their fifth grades. You you’re having to get younger with this prevention stuff, right? But because it’s activity driven, you know, you can do that. The facilitator can adjust it to meet the needs of their particular audience. So yeah, like your hamburger, throw some sausage on that puppy. If you need to hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, go ahead. That is an old jingle from years ago.
That’s so fun. Well, I want to leave people a chance to check out, thrive, learn about what you’re doing because the excitement speaks for itself. I know Z has, Zion has implemented your curriculum around Arizona. Tomas might even have too. But if someone is like, hey, I want to see this. I want to check it out. Where can they specifically go to learn more?
Connecting with Communities and Personal Touch
They can go to the website, empoweringbreakthrough.com and there they can learn about it. And then, you they can always send me a message there. They can email me directly at ted at empoweringbreakthrough.com. And, you know, usually I’ll, I have the ability, the time to connect with people personally. And that’s another feature that I didn’t want to give up. Service is really important.
And being able to talk to the individual that created the product and has knowledge firsthand of how different people are using it, I think is an important thing for individuals that are wanting to really get a good idea of, is this something that will work for me? And that’s how I start the conversation. I say, hey, if this is for you, let’s make this happen.
But if this isn’t for you, then my hope and prayer is that you find the thing that you need, because I don’t want to fill that position if it’s not. If they come in and ask me to do a dynamic earth shattering, get the kids moving a presentation to an auditorium, I’m going to say, I’ve got somebody else that can do that for you better. I can come in there and be the older uncle, dad, grandpa.
I can speak, I just don’t have the ability to get that, you hey, you want to get in there, you want to make a move, then come here. So I like to have that conversation because, you know, once again, you got to put the horse in front of the cart, but if it lines up, if it works for them, then, you know, it’s worked for a lot of people. And I feel that there’s a lot of people out there that are looking for a tool that they can utilize.
And you know what I love? was, as the couple of conversations we’ve had, you, you were so protective of me and Vive 18 and saying like, Hey, if this is a good fit, that’s not going to take away from everything or what you’re already building. And that was so kind of you, like shows your heart. But I love that we’re, both on the same spot of like the world needs all of this. And if you’re sitting there thinking, you know what? I’ve already got.
I’ve already got prime for life. I got too good for drug. I’ve got whatever it is, this curriculum, I’ve got life skills. It’s not an or, it’s an and. If you’re using our Vive 18 toolkit, these things like Thrive that Ted has built is a supplement because we know that there’s no silver bullet for saving lives. That it takes a village, it takes a couple resources and it’s one of those things that if you already have something in place,
There’s going to be different things that other schools might want or other facilitators. And as somebody who is a coalition professional, if you’re listening right now, I’ve been more excited about the things that I’ve been hearing about Thrive enough to say, just go check it out. Go to empoweringbreakthrough.com, send Ted a message and just, you know, ask to check things out and have a discussion with them because he’s got great ideas. As somebody who’s in the field, I get fired up when I chat with him. So.
If this can be a tool in your tool belt and you’re looking for something to support more of your students or empowering volunteers to go into the schools, the Thrive Curriculum might be something to check out. So go to empoweringbreakthrough.com and feel free to send Ted a message because he’s a great guy to chat with. Now, Ted, I want to leave our audience with one parting, just piece of guidance or support. Is there anything that you want to share with people that are doing prevention day in and day out, either a piece of advice or encouragement, you would just leave them with for today.
You know, I gosh, there’s a number of things that come to mind. So I’m trying to narrow it down to, here’s one. We don’t always see the fruit of what we’re doing immediately. And I’ve had the ability, because I’ve been in the field for a long time, that I’ve been able to see some fruit from eight, 10, 12 years down the road. And so that there’s a thousand of them just brings a validation to a truth that we know.
And you know, there’s a scriptural truth that say that what we do will not return void. But sometimes that the hope of, we don’t see it. So we just have to use this faith that it’s gonna happen. And I just wanted just to leave the audience with you matter. What you are doing is making a difference. my prayer is that you have hope and trust that what you’re doing is making an impact for not only this generation but generations to come because they will have kids and their kids will have kids and so on and so forth. So take heart, take heart and stand firm. So I guess that would be the one that I’ll leave you with right now. Amen. Thank you, Ted. And thank you for all of our listeners tuning in each week. I hope you’re fired up to make a change this week. We will see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.
