The Lionheart Foundation
HomeBringing a powerful and effective emotional literacy curriculum to prisoners and youth at risk across the country.
- The Youth Project
- About the Book Power Source
- The Power Source Facilitators’ Manual
- The Power Source Video Series
- The Power Source Professional Training On DVD
- About Power Source Parenting
- Author Bethany Casarjian
- What Teens Say About Power Source
- What Professionals Say About Power Source
- Professional Trainings
The Youth Project
“Nearly 20 million teens in this country are at serious risk of not achieving positive adulthood.”
The National Academy of Sciences
White House Task Force on Disadvantaged Youth Report
In 2003, The Lionheart Foundation launched The National Emotional Literacy Project for Youth-At-Risk to help highly at-risk adolescents break cycles of violence, addiction, and negative risk-taking. Through this initiative, adolescents are offered a program that provides strategies to carve out a new way of life – helping them break cycles of negative high-risk behavior; heal shame, anger and grief; and emerge with a new sense of self and a positive future orientation.
The centerpiece of this youth program is the book/curriculum Power Source: Taking Charge of Your Life written by psychologist Bethany Casarjian, Ph.D., and Houses of Healing author Robin Casarjian, M.A. It is augmented by the Power Source Facilitator’s Manual and Video Series. This program is now utilized in 3,000 sites throughout the United States, including juvenile institutions and detention centers, private and public schools, residential programs, group homes and community programs. Response from both staff and youth has been overwhelmingly positive.
The newest component of Lionheart’s youth initiative is Power Source Parenting: Growing Up Strong and Raising Healthy Kids launched in 2008. This cutting edge program is a primary intervention designed to give at risk teen parents the guidance and skills they need to be loving, effective parents and raise healthy children.
Through Lionheart’s targeted free distribution campaigns more than 55,000 copies of Power Source have been distributed and Power Source Parenting has been introduced to more than 2500 teen parenting programs nationwide.
For a Free Professional Review Copy of Power Source Parenting, click here.
The Lionheart Foundation is currently involved in a major research project funded by the National Institutes of Health to establish Power Source as an “evidence-based” program.
“I decided to run a group with Power Source. The kids loved it. It’s an amazing program. I have been looking for something like this for a long time.” –
Psychologist, Allentown, PA
Approximately 100,000 youth are taken into custody each day and placed temporarily in juvenile detention centers in the United States. This number does not include the highly at-risk youth that fill residential treatment centers, drug treatment facilities, community-based alternative-to-incarceration programs, and middle and high schools. Simply put, the number of at-risk youth in need of rehabilitative and preventative services is enormous.