By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
    Peter Brown recalled a conversation with the parent of one of STRIVE’s members.
    “Before STRIVE, their son would go down the class list and call just about everybody in his class to get together to do something on the weekend and everybody would say no,” Brown said. “Now after going to STRIVE, he’s got hundreds of friends to see and get together with and isn’t shy about doing that and has Friday nights. That’s his thing. It’s his social connection.”
    Since 1999, STRIVE has helped teenagers and young adults with developmental disabilities find peer support as they participate in a variety of social and educational experiences. STRIVE offers several programs including a summer camp, a Wednesday night educational series and opportunities for post secondary education, but Friday night tends to be the most popular among members.
    Brown, STRIVE’S program manager, said the chance to socialize while playing pool or watching the Red Sox game typically draws a crowd of more than 100 people, between the ages of 15 and 24,  to the STRIVE Center in South Portland each Friday night. One parent drives down from Augusta each week so her daughter can participate. Other parents have said their sons and daughters will miss family birthdays and weddings so they can go to STRIVE.
    At the completion of tomorrow’s TD Banknorth Beach to Beacon 10K Road Race, STRIVE will receive a cash donation of $30,000 from the TD Banknorth Charitable Foundation. The race committee chose STRIVE to be this year’s race beneficiary and Brown said the donation will be used for  maintenance and renovations to the STRIVE Center to ensure the Friday night fun continues.     
    Brown said STRIVE has submitted several applications to the race committee. With their latest application touting the organization’s presence in the community and its willingness to work hard, Brown said the grant adds some legitimacy to the organization.  
    “Being a fairly new program [and] a fairly small program, it really validates both the need for programs like these and also the abilities of the young people that we work with,” he said.             
    STRIVE is part of PSL Services, an agency that has been serving adults with developmental disabilities since the 1980s. Brown said his original plan was to teach junior high level English, but after working for the former credit card company MBNA after graduating from the University of Southern Maine, his search for more rewarding work led him to PSL and then to STRIVE.  
    “I was really looking for something that was going to be a little bit more different everyday and this really gives me a chance–I mean it can’t be anymore different everyday,” he said. “It gives me a chance to work with people, still do some teaching, but also to have hands in the business end of things and event planning and a lot of different things depending on the day.”
    The majority of individuals who participate in PSL’s programs do so via MaineCare or Medicare, Brown said. STRIVE, however, relies completely on their public relation efforts and  fundraising.
    One of STRIVE’s ongoing fundraisers is Bookworks!, a volunteer run used bookstore. Located near the lobby, Brown said the store is “probably one of greater Portland’s best kept secrets.”
     “We sell paperbacks for a buck and hard covers for three and a lot of the books are almost brand new. Our members really take ownership in the project and [are] able to gain work experience and get some hands on experience.”
    Perhaps STRIVE’s most well known program is STRIVE U, a year round post secondary education program. Prospective STRIVE U students go through a full admissions process and fill out an application, interview with an admissions board and attend an overnight visit.
    Students live on the residential campus–three apartments operated by STRIVE- attend classes at the University of Southern Maine and  take jobs in the community. After students graduate from the two year program, STRIVE helps with the transition to the next step by helping them find jobs and a place to live.
    “That program has really gotten a lot of media attention in the last year or so,” Brown said. “Last summer at about this time actually, we were in People magazine and then also National Public Radio so a lot of people–they know more about STRIVE U than they do about Strive.”
    While Brown appreciates the attention STRIVE U has received, he pointed out that it is only one of the programs STRIVE offers. The numbers say it all: STRIVE U has 12 students and 12 alumni, but the STRIVE organization serves more than 450 individuals.
    The national interest STRIVE U has generated suggests the STRIVE organization is meeting a critical need, which is accomplished by listening to what the members and their families want and need, Brown said.   
    For example, the after school program for high school students, STRIVE’s newest program, is the direct result of working with a group of parents and administration at Portland’s Deering High School.
    “Deering has early release days every Wednesday for the whole school year,” he said. “For a lot of high school kids that would be fine–to be able to be home alone and be on their own for a few hours before their parents come home from work, but for many STRIVE members and their families that might not be okay.”
    Brown said as a result STRIVE created the Wednesday afternoon recreation program for students that are enrolled in Life Skills classes.         
    STRIVE also operates on the advice of a nine member advisory board, which Brown said operates similarly to a student council. The board votes on themes for social events and picks outing destinations. The summer camp program also has theme weeks and  members might go on the Narrow Gauge Railroad or take a tour of the airport for a planes, trains and automobiles week.
    As STRIVE members embark on new experiences, Brown said he doesn’t want STRIVE to be an individual’s whole life, but rather he hopes it is a meaningful addition to someone’s life. While he said there is no way to gather any quantitative data around the impact of STRIVE, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence. One of his favorite stories involving STRIVE members and high school aged volunteers demonstrates the impact of the organization’s focus on peer support.
    Early on in the program, Brown said a group of freshman and sophomore girls who volunteered at STRIVE, wanted to have lunch with some of the members that attended their school. The girls searched the cafeteria for their new friends, but couldn’t find them. As this was a large high school with more than one lunch period, the girls went to all of the lunches that day. The girls finally found their friends having lunch in the Special Ed classroom in the basement of the school. For about a week after that, the volunteers brought their lunch down to the Special Ed room. The following week, the girls went down to the classroom first and brought their friends to the cafeteria. Fed up with going through a process each time they wanted to eat together, the girls took action.
    “They went and knocked on the principal’s office door and told the principal, ‘Why do these guys have to have lunch down there in their class and nobody else does and why shouldn’t they be able to eat in the cafeteria with everybody else?’” Brown said. “The principal didn’t really have an answer for them and changed the way that that worked.”
    Brown added, “I like that example because not only does it show what we’ve done in the lives of people with disabilities, but it also shows how we’ve educated some young people without disabilities as well.”  
    For more information about STRIVE or to learn how to volunteer or make a donation visit www.pslstrive.org.