The Spark Movement: A Journey of Connection

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White. And today we are hanging out with Tanya Shaner and she is so incredible. We actually met years back at this program that trains youth speakers. And it was so cool. We were at CADCA she comes up and is like, Hey, we know each other. And we got to reminisce. So before we get talking with Tanya, I’m going to share a little bit about her. So Tanya practices parental proactive prevention. Say that five times.

She has been on the board for the Weber Communities That Care coalition since 2017, as well as the youth advisor for it. Two of her own teens serve on their youth council as well. So after she was a youth speaker focusing on resiliency, mental wellness, and suicide prevention, she’s now taking a different approach and focusing on protective factors for her family. Her husband and their five kids ranging from six to 20 years old,  are founders of the Spread the Spark movement. It’s a shift towards taking down walls and being intentional about connection, connection with themselves, God, and others. For years, they have literally been taking this movement on the road via road trips and are now planning their biggest experimental journey yet, an epic year-long adventure, traveling from country to country, expanding their village along the way.

This is going to be so cool to learn about, Tanya. So many may not see this as prevention on the surface, but as Richard Feynman said, in a world saturated with distractions, actively choosing presence is a powerful and even radical act. Tanya is actively seeking authenticity and loves sharing and learning along the way. So Tanya, welcome to the show. Appreciate you hanging out with me today.

Thanks, I appreciate the invitation.

Yeah. Okay. So I just, I want to get into this fascinating thing you’re doing and then let’s talk about some prevention stuff. So if it sounds wild, you’ve been taking road trips with your family with a mission. Like tell us more about the spark movement that you’ve been doing and like, what’s the purpose? And then I’d love to hear how it’s going.

Yeah, I’ve felt this drive for years for us to travel, which is kind of crazy because I struggle with it day by day. I’ve struggled a lot with depression. And so it’s been crazy that I’ve continued to feel this drive, especially where I basically stay at home. Mom, my dad’s a, or my dad, my husband is a corrections officer. He just retired of 20 years. So it’s not like we’ve had a ton of money, but it just kept feeling important.

I thought there’s gotta be more to it than just showing our kids cool things. There’s these people all over the places that we’re going and I’d love to connect with them and I thought how can we add service to this? How can we add connection? And so it started originally as, we wanna find people who are making the world a better place and I thought what can we give them? And I didn’t wanna just give them a piece of paper or something. So to make whatever we gave them at least have something they wouldn’t just like throw away.

We actually, the first time we did it, we glued laminated papers to nickel. People aren’t going to throw away a nickel. It has a tiny bit of value. I remember in Seattle, there’s Chinatown out there. handing them, we’re watching for people and we’re giving them out. Then it evolved to the Spread the Spark tokens, which have our logo on one side and the QR code on the other. The QR code explains what it is. It’s like a pass it on kindness challenge for my kids to start looking for the helpers, looking for people who are actively making the world a better place. And so we’ve been doing that for the last several years on different road trips. When we actually started getting the, we got stickers to put on these little tokens, just our janky little next step up from Nichols was actually, went and did a humanitarian trip in Tijuana, tried taking a three-year-old to Tijuana. And we lived at an orphanage for five days and helped do projects in my kids got to play soccer with these kids that they couldn’t speak very well to. But it was actually these local kids that lived in the orphanage that were putting these stickers on the Spread the Spark tokens. And then we sent them home with these volunteers that came from all over the place. So that’s how it first started spreading. And now they’re out and about. so it’s been a little bit slow kind of getting it going because I wanted it to grow organically. Like the only people on the Spread the Spark Facebook page were the people that had received a token.

But now I’m just, okay, inviting the masses and saying, let’s get this going. And we’re preparing for our big trip. So we don’t leave for another 10 months because our oldest daughter is serving a mission for our church in Ecuador. So when she gets back and our next daughter graduates from high school, that’s when we’re gonna go for a year, homeschool the youngest three. Was that a long enough explanation for you? Yeah. The background.

Okay, wow. Yeah, that was great. Okay, so I’m trying to actually fill in some of the questions in my mind. So it was the nickels, they had just a… you said it was like a piece of paper or laminated. Was it a QR code on it initially or just a kind message or what was on that first piece of paper?

No, no, it was, it was handwritten, pass it on, like pass, yeah, pass it on. Cause there had to be small letters, right? To fit on the nickel. So it was just like a, a pass it on kindness challenge. Like, Hey, I noticed that that really was cool that you did that. We appreciate it. Hey, pass this on to somebody else. Do something that matters or that has an impact on you. And it was just little things, know, the lady who offered to take our picture.

Yeah, this cute little Asian lady at Mount Rushmore who she offers to take her picture. Didn’t realize only half of our family was there. And she like wants to get a good shot of Mount Rushmore. So she lays down on the ground and is trying to get the picture. And then we’re laughing and she realizes half our family’s not in it. She’s like, I need to get your family. So just people like that, but sometimes little tiny things, sometimes big things, but it’s just to be actively looking for the people who are making a difference, it really changes your perspective when you go about your daily life and in travel and whenever.

Yeah. well that’s so powerful. It’s simple, but it’s powerful because we don’t always get acknowledged for that kind of stuff. And then when you get an item that you could literally pass to someone else and say, yes, they acknowledged me and appreciated me for this. That felt amazing. Now I get to do that for someone else. is creating a spark. It’s spreading kindness and that’s so fun. And so now today when they have the token that’s kind of branded and it’s got your movement on it and everything. So the QR code takes them to the website. They learn about the movement. And then do they document anything, for example, like on your page or your social media where they share why someone gave it to them or why they gave it to someone else? Or like, what is the action of the person who gets the token look like today?

Exactly. I’m glad you asked that. So the idea is, yes, they go to the Facebook page and they either share why they were given it or why they gave it to somebody. And so it just helps us all appreciate it and enjoy that. And so now just anybody who wants to join can and just kind of be part of that movement. So it’s all about because it’s kind of scary, right, to go up and hand somebody something and say, I noticed this or I think it’s huge that I did that to see people. Right. So

The philosophy kind of behind it is it’s a gift to do something kind. Perhaps even more powerful is to show someone that they are kind because then you’re building their identity and as that becomes their identity, then the ripples just spread more and more. It becomes really powerful.

Planning a Year-Long Adventure

Wow, that’s so cool. my gosh. I’m curious of like right now, you have it set up. It sounds very organic and it’s grassroots. Do you see it in the future or maybe even now is it possible if I said, hey, I love this Tanya. Like with my club, I would like to purchase 10 tokens and we can start recognizing people in our community and kind of spark the spark here. Do you have that right now or is that something you see?

It’s been part of the idea. Yeah. We thought about maybe on the website, throwing something on there where people can purchase them. We thought about some variations like of that, where there’s maybe tokens that come with a kindness journal that has some inspiration in there, has some journal pages where people can document what they did with their coins. Yeah. Maybe as getting it into schools and communities. Originally, I was just thinking I’d love to have families pick this up or individuals and just kind of do their own movement, their own like projects doing it, but it would be super cool to have it spread more. I mean, that’s why it is spread the spark. So on the Facebook group page, we already have people in Bulgaria and Germany and it’s, it’s traveling around. So I may have to do something to figure out how to get it. So it’s not just in English because apparently there’s people who aren’t sure how to, you know, read in English that are getting them. So yeah.

My gosh, what a cool problem to have. Well, let’s see. And then you have the big trip coming up, which again, you have 10 months to plan. The thought behind that, so you’re going to continue this. By the way, what a fun thing for anybody listening. I’m already thinking about my vacations and I’m thinking, how can I make my vacation time and time with family more impactful?

Like you said, it’s not just a, we go and relax for a week or we go and do this for a week, but something that’s a little more meaningful and honestly, probably creating lifelong memories and values that are going to be shared and grown throughout the community. So I just wanted to pull that from everything you’re doing and maybe just ask all of us, hey, what’s something we could potentially do on our next trip? my gosh. And I would be, I got to plug this.

We’re having our prevention crews going from Boston to Bermuda and back again. So like, this is something for us too. Like if you’re coming on the prevention innovators crews and conference, like who knows by the time that’s launched in April, this could be an element in there and creating some sort of service project because that’s prevention and all the things that you mentioned about creating positive identity and all that stuff. And we have some good connections in Bermuda to see, yeah, Do we want to have an impact while we’re there? Not just learning from them, but also making an impact. So I love that. What does your trip look like when you mentioned like, we’re going to do a year country to country. How do you even go about starting to plan that or what does that look like?

Yeah, yeah. So I tend to be a very creative thinker, which is necessary when you’re bootstrapping something this big. And so as far as the literal planning part, I’ve been trying to think, how can I get paid for the time I spend planning? And I’ve decided this next year, I’m going to be a substitute teacher at high school and junior highs because there’s a lot of downtime. I have a friend that I just talked to that got back from a couple of months trip to Europe and that’s when she planned it. And it’s interesting, you being a youth speaker, kind of having that connection.

Here I was chasing schools, trying to get into schools and share this message of resiliency and suicide prevention. And here I’m like, they’re going to pay me to be in the school every day around these teenagers. And there was a speaker at CADCA who was a retired police officer and he was able to write his own grant. his position at this school where he works is he just walks around and talks to students. Like that is his job, which is so cool because counselors most often they’re not able to spend a lot of time doing the emotional work with students. And so he’s able to build that connection. I’m like, I’m going to be there every day and I’m going to be in an area that’s pretty high risk youth. And so I might be singing a different tune in a couple months to to experience this, but I’m really excited.

And I’m just tapping into that space in my brain to like see it as a challenge and see, take rejection so hard that I’m sure is going to be coming, but just to kind of gather data and figure out, how can I be most effective? And just showing off authentically and like being able to not sit there and lecture, but share enough of my story and fill it out with youth and even like go sit at lunch with them. I can handle this now. My ego’s not so fragile as it was in high school, right? That I can like go and put myself out there.

So anyway, that’s kind of a side note. That’s where I’m gonna be doing the planning. But the idea is that we’re going to do six months on the Eastern half of the United States because over the last few years we’ve done the Western half and my husband and I, we used to be in a singing group where we would do devotionals, musical devotionals, and we traveled to Alaska. So we kind of check marked Alaska, which is partly what inspired this idea. Cause we got to go and stay with people that we would perform for in Alaska and in California. And it was so powerful and so cool to connect with the people and not just stay at a Airbnb or a hotel. So I’m like, we can do this and we can do these events and we can do like, musical devotionals and my 17 year old daughter, speaks and people just are crying and quoting her. Like we can get you speaking. And I was really grateful for your CADCA class where you guys talked about events. Cause I was like, there’s so many great ideas on how we can do this. And then I got home and started talking to my kids. And I’m also grateful that there was a lot of talk about involving youth voices. Cause they’re like, mom, I don’t know that I want to do that. That sounds pretty stressful. And I’m like, okay, I’m looking ahead thinking, I can see me like, guys, we got to get to this place. We’re doing, know, drill mastering it. So I was able to kind of take a step back and we really reevaluated like, hey, we know our vision statement, our goal is connection, right? What does that look like? And if we’re, if I’m yelling at you guys, being drill sergeant about, okay, we need to be here on this day and here on this day and here on this day, it’s not going to fulfill the, what we’re really wanting to get, which is at its core, this is about my family. This is about proactive prevention.

I’ve worked enough in prevention now for eight years and before that with suicide prevention specifically to know that it’s all about connection. It’s people go to substances when they feel isolated, when they feel like they don’t have community. And so I’m not using the word prevention here much, but it’s absolutely protective factors. So I’m not even really focusing on like the risk factor so much. We’re just so hardcore going in on the protective factors that it’s kind of hard to recognize it as prevention. But so we’re making sure the kids are on board, they’re excited, they’re all in, and I don’t know if I answered your question. I have some major ADHD tendencies. So if I ever get off track, feel free to steer me back. But you asked about kind of where our path was, right?

Yeah, so after the Eastern United States, where are you going to go after that?

Yeah. Yeah. So we’ll hop into Canada when we’re up north. And then the goal, I’ve told the kids, if they can make enough money that we can cruise across the Atlantic rather than fly. So they’re making money and trying to work their little heinies off. Then we can take a cruise over to Spain. And then, so we would sell our van and our RV that we were taking in at the Eastern half of United States.

Sell that because we’re only gonna be able to afford it by buying an RV and then selling it again like Afterwards instead of trying to rent that’ll cost a lot more. So then we go to Europe I’m hoping to go into Africa and then all over Europe RV there and again sell the RV before we come home Yeah, can only do three months in like the main of Europe and then like we can do three months in Scotland and England. So that’s the plan. So it’ll probably be more like 14 months, more than a year, since we have two summers. And then so my son can get back for his senior year. But yeah.

Wow. Okay. This is, that is an incredible undertaking. You are so brave. It’s very, very fun. I’d love to move into some of your prevention stuff. hopefully by now, mean, yeah, that’s just an incredible thing. I love how you tie prevention into it. It’s like, this is prevention and you’re focusing on your mission is like your kids are your mission right now and they’re the focus of this trip.

Community Engagement and Youth Involvement

You mentioned, or I mentioned in the beginning, it’s part of your intro. You’ve been doing some prevention work with your local coalition since 2017 and your kids are even part of it. But tell us a little bit about where you’re from in Utah, the kind of landscape and what kind of things your coalition is focusing on this year.

Yeah, I love our coalition. So Communities That Care, are you familiar with that organization? The model? Yeah. So we’re all over the United States and there’s different cones. So our cone is considered the Weber Cone. So it’s all the elementary schools, junior highs that feed into this one high school. And so we are able to give sharp testing. like actually asking the youth what their mental health state is, whether they’ve used drugs and alcohol.

Yeah, that model. Yep. It asks them all these questions and then we’re able to actually look at the data and see, this is where we’re struggling. For example, we could tell that, sixth graders are really not feeling connected to school. And we were able to kind of track and see like even how COVID affected that and, okay, what can we actually do about it? What are some actionable steps? And we were able to go as a coalition with the youth to DC and to talk to legislators and talk to them about how we’re needing counselors more in the elementary schools even that weren’t getting enough support there. And so we were able to take that data and we do a lot of family fun type activities, family bonding kits, and we just really focus on here’s where we actually are, not these like ideas of what could help, but actual steps to making, offering classes and encouraging family dinners, things like that.

Okay, that’s cool. That’s really cool. you know what, maybe I said yes too fast because to like, do I know about communities that care? Because I spend a lot of my time at CADCA and they use the strategic prevention framework and the model for drug-free communities grants. Where I first learned about communities that care was through NPN, the National Prevention Network. And it seemed like more of the communities there use the communities that care model. Since you’re kind of part of both worlds, I guess, I’m putting on the spot, but would you be able to explain either, yeah, if someone’s new to communities that care, what is it? Or if you know this, how does it differentiate from the other model of using coalitions that may be drug-free communities? Anything you can share is valuable.

Okay, you’re cutting out some, it’s hard to hear exactly what other groups you were talking about with the coalition. I can mostly just speak to our coalition and what the larger communities that care is, but it’s a model where, yeah, people adopt it for their own area. I know we do use a bunch of grants. We are under the United Way of Utah, kind of their umbrella, and they do a lot of stuff like Welcome Baby like for helping low income families and preschool work and all sorts of things. And so we’re kind of under their umbrella. And then within the umbrella of communities that care, we have different work groups. So there’s like PR and there’s the board group and there’s funding. And then I’m on the board and then I also help with the youth. So we do our meetings and distribute things, the parades and all that kind of thing. So.

I’m not sure if that answers what your question is, but I intentionally kind of kept myself. I’ve been a volunteer to like all these things. I’ve never been, people kind of are amazed at all these things I’ve been able to do. Like I’m a singer or songwriter. I’ve done screenwriting. I’ve done a lot of fun things that I really enjoyed. I follow my curiosities and so it gets me into a lot of things. Yeah, no, you did a good job.

And people are kind of amazed by, wow, it’s great. You can do all these things. But I’m amazed by the people who are in the trenches every day going to work eight hours a day doing the heavy lifting of prevention work. And so partly because of that, though, I feel like I’ve had some longevity where a lot of people have been burnt out and have left. So I’ve seen kind of the coalition through some ups and downs. But I know it’s it’s, It’s a very stable, widespread, huge thing across the nation. These communities that care very like documented and here’s how you establish your coalition. Here’s how you just educating everybody about prevention factors and risk factors and all of that.

Okay, that’s super helpful. Thank you, Tonya. Yeah. And how did your, what involvement do your kids play in all this? And you’re like, you advise the, maybe the youth council or something. What are some projects or some things that you can brag on them that they’ve been able to do? You did mention like, right, going to advocate at the Capitol and stuff like that. But we’d love to hear, yeah, some other things that you’re proud of them for and things that they’ve done.

Yeah. So yeah, the two of my kids are in the coalition. I have five kids ranging from 20 to six, but the two that are in the coalition. So my daughter’s been in it for several years. And my son just joined this last year. He’s just starting. So he’s pretty new. This last summer, he got to go to our Bryce Canyon training where he really got to know the youth and he’s really psyched about what’s coming. So that’s been exciting. But my daughter, having been in it for years, she’s done panels with me.

We’ve done some speaking together to talk to youth groups with their parents on how to communicate with each other more effectively. She got the, I don’t remember they called it, but like the mental health youth of the year award for all the work she’s done on Hope squads and being extremely involved. She’s, she’s pretty amazing. She actually, I mean, it’s kind of a secret, but she does what she calls drug busting where she actually goes into convenience stores with law enforcement and the health department and tries to buy tobacco products. And so she kind of has to put on her poker face and act normal. And so she thinks that’s a really cool job she gets to do. So it’s nice that we trust her enough to know that we’re not just training her to buy drugs, that she’s really against this. Yeah, it’s been really fun to watch and it’s cool that I get to do it with them.

That’s really, really awesome. Wow. And yeah, good on you. You got some incredible kids doing great work just like you. So if someone is listening to this and thinking, hey, yeah, Tonya, you do a lot. You do a lot and you’re dedicated and your prevention program sounds incredible, like that you’re a part of, but I don’t know if I can do that. What would you say to that person?

Empowerment Through Acknowledgment and Connection

I feel it’s so important for people to look at their own wheelhouse. Because when we look at somebody else’s and try to compare ourselves to where we are and our abilities and our situations, it doesn’t serve us. I encourage for people to, I’m not saying that go on a big trip with your family. For me, this is kind of like emotional boot camp, I feel like, because I haven’t been the mom I’ve always wanted to be. I was actually literally hospitalized four years ago, even as I was speaking to youth about suicide prevention, I had some suicide ideology and I was in the hospital for four days because of it. So I don’t want people to think, ⁓ this great, you’re doing so much. What really I want people to take out of this and the reason we’re promoting it is because I want to help empower people and inspire people to see it doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what struggles you’ve been through.

Just look at your life and see what you’re excited about and start going towards those things instead of living in fear of the things that scare you.

Ooh, I love that. That’s so powerful. Wow. And it’s easy to get caught up in the, they’re doing this or they’re doing that. Or I wish my life looked like that or I had this, but we never know what that person is going through. I often misuse the word never. Like we’re not supposed to use words like that because it’s often wrong.

I can say that confidently, we never know what is going on under the surface for someone else, no matter how much they look like they have it together or how amazing their life is. We can’t know all that’s going on. I did want to also ask you as far as your involvement in the coalition, because you’re a volunteer and everything, how does your contacts at the coalition show you that they value you or certain things to help you continue making a difference and maybe not get burnt out or things like that. If you think they’re doing a good job, right? Like any tips you have for people out here that want to take care of their members and volunteers and staff.

Okay, so you’re glitching a little bit. So you’re asking what we can do to help acknowledge the people who are helping in coalitions and is that what saying? Okay. Yeah. Acknowledgement I think is huge as part of our model with communities that care is validation, just to be able to recognize people and appreciate them. That’s so helpful. We do a lot of things with like gifts and we’ll do end of year celebrations to highlight the accomplishments of people on our coalition. But I find the most effective thing is the one-on-one appreciation because, and whenever, like I’m big on thank you notes type of thing, but just to say you’re awesome. Like I try to dig deeper. like, why are you awesome? Because when you can get really specific, that’s where people feel so seen and that can go so far in helping someone feel they have value and a lot to contribute.

Yeah, that’s so true. right now, so when we were texting back and forth, I mentioned I’m creating some videos right now for a course and we had to reshoot one of the video series. so someone I’m working with to do this, just the fact that she acknowledged, Jake, I know you’re busy and you have a lot of work to do. Thank you for like saying yes to having a reshoot. It made me feel exactly like you said. I felt seen, I felt appreciated. And honestly, it’s because of that that I had a good time. I wasn’t feeling right. Like if she didn’t acknowledge that, maybe I would have felt a little bit not resentful, but I could have, or, here we are doing it again. That simple act of appreciation goes a long, long way.

It puts wins back in your sales. Yeah. It helps you remember why you’re doing it. Yeah, so true. Well, Tanya, this has been incredible. Where can people go to learn more about what you’re doing and to follow your journey?

Yeah, the best place is spread the spark face. It’s called spread the spark experiment is the Facebook group. We do have a website that’s spread the spark.org and that is very bare bones right now. There’ll be a lot added to it. That’s what this next 10 months is for is figuring out exactly what want that to look like, figuring out if we can manufacture coins and sell those. So there’s a, there’s a lot we can do with it. So right now, which is basically that website just directs you to the Facebook group, but that’s where we’re starting and we’ll see where it goes.

Awesome. Well, Tanya, stay on the call for a little bit while we wrap up. But for everyone listening, I hope that you felt encouraged by this episode. I know we walked away with a couple ideas. We even have, maybe if you hadn’t heard of the communities that care model, that might be something to look into and to learn from. We can always share best practices and that there’s this movement going on spread the spark and I’m really excited to learn more about it and to continue following you, Tanya. for everyone listening, you’re doing incredible life-saving work. No matter what it looks like, you are learning and growing on a mission that is saving lives. So thank you for staying in the game. Thank you for being passionate. And even if it is, plugging in every Monday to get refired up about the week just by listening to this episode.

We appreciate you tuning in. Please send this episode to a friend and we’ll see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.