Project Summary
Teens Inspiring Excellence is a program of the EVE Foundation of Missoula, Montana. It is designed to inspire hope, courage, and action in teens. The program is a series of short documentary films highlighting high school seniors who have overcome significant obstacles and adversity. These students successfully graduated from high school and moved forward to create productive and hopeful lives for themselves. They have taken simple, courageous steps, to improve their own situation, help others, and grow in the process.
Three videos, each with an accompanying facilitator's guide, are currently available for licensing to clubs, high schools, youth groups, and youth counseling facilities. Evaluation copies of both the documentary videos and the Facilitators Guides are available for download at no cost. Simply register as a facilitator below. You also may order a hard copy of the DVD and the Facilitators Guide for evaluation purposes for $14.95 (includes shipping and handling.) If you are interested in licensing the videos for use, please contact the EVE Foundation. It is our goal to make these available to every organization that wants them. If the nominal licensing fee precludes your organization from using the program please contact us. We can assist you in finding outside grants or funding.
These films provide a dynamic forum for conversation, resources, and modeling of successful pathways for all youth; from honor students to those who may be struggling with difficult challenges and a narrowed view of their own possibilities.
Over the past five years, EVE Foundation President Lee Cox has traveled and spoken at over 100 high schools, youth groups, and youth correction and counseling facilities, finding a common theme among the teens with whom he's visited. Over and over, he saw that life circumstances, events, and choices had narrowed these teens view of what was possible for them in their lives. His own life experience as an abused child has sensitized him to the hopelessness, resentments, and need for survival that often control and "fence in" these young people's dreams.
These documentaries are designed to show by example how simple steps, such as asking for help, changing an attitude, or taking a risk, can empower students to move forward in their lives regardless of the circumstances life has given them.
The Teens Inspiring Excellence program will directly benefit all teens, by exposing them to role models of students who have overcome adversity and, by fostering conversation about their own situations in a supportive setting. The program thus directly supports the organizations who serve youth by putting these films and discussion guides into the organization's hands.
