Friday, May 25, 2012

Teen homelessness project gets boost

High school senior raises funds for fledgling Reset organization


By TERRY SMITH
Express Staff Writer

Silver Creek High School senior Taylor Jameson surprised Wood River High School world languages teacher Jean Bohl on Wednesday with a check for $1,973 to help get a teenage homeless safehouse started in Blaine County. Jameson raised the money as part of her senior project. Bohl is president of a newly organized group called “RESET” that is working to make the safehouse a reality. Photo by David N. Seelig

A fledgling organization working toward establishment of a teenage homeless safehouse in the Wood River Valley received a financial boost Wednesday as Silver Creek High School senior Taylor Jameson presented organization President Jean Bohl with a check for $1,973.

The funds raised by Jameson, as part of her high school senior project, were nearly double the $1,000 goal that she and Bohl had earlier established. The money came primarily from a fundraising dinner organized by Jameson and held in April, though donations continued to come in even after the event.

Jameson presented Bohl with the check during her senior project presentation at the Community Campus.

"This check now gives us marching orders," Bohl told a group of some 20 parents and judges for the projects. "That young lady worked so hard to raise that money. We need to respond to what she's done. This young girl is the pioneer—she led the way. This will basically enable us to start doing things."

Jameson, Bohl and other interested community members and organizations have been working on the teen homelessness project for several months. The group is now officially organized and calling itself "Reset."

"The idea of the Reset house is that if the game doesn't work out, then you hit reset," Bohl said.

<

The organization is tackling what it describes as a valleywide problem of teenagers' either voluntarily leaving or getting kicked out of their homes. The concept is that the Reset safehouse would give homeless teens a safe place to stay and that efforts would be made to reconcile the teenager with family.

According to information provided by the organization, about one in eight teenagers nationwide at sometime in their youth either leave home or get kicked out. Locally, a survey conducted by the group found that 40 percent of students in the Wood River Valley know another student who has been in a homeless situation.

Bohl said the funds raised by Jameson will help the organization establish nonprofit status, start working out the operational details of a safehouse, search for a suitable location, aid with additional fundraising efforts and begin a public education campaign.

In addition to Bohl, other officers of Reset are Vice President Julie Carney, a Blaine County School District social worker; Treasurer Tricia Swartling, executive director of the Advocates; and legal advisor Douglas Werth, an attorney in Hailey.

Other board members are youth counselor Greg Greenfield and concerned parent Claire Cassano Murray.

Terry Smith: tsmith@mtexpress.com

Jean Bohl's status?

Longtime Wood River High School world languages teacher Jean Bohl was placed on paid administrative leave earlier this month by the Blaine County School District. Bohl has thus far declined to publicly discuss the reasons for the district action, and the district does not release information regarding personnel issues. Bohl had previously announced his intention to retire from teaching at the end of June.




About Comments

Comments with content that seeks to incite or inflame may be removed.

Comments that are in ALL CAPS may be removed.

Comments that are off-topic or that include profanity or personal attacks, libelous or other inappropriate material may be removed from the site. Entries that are unsigned or contain signatures by someone other than the actual author may be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or any other policies governing this site. Use of this system denotes full acceptance of these conditions. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing, Inc.

You may flag individual comments. You may also report an inappropriate or offensive comment by clicking here.

Flagging Comments: Flagging a comment tells a site administrator that a comment is inappropriate. You can find the flag option by pointing the mouse over the comment and clicking the 'Flag' link.

Flagging a comment is only counted once per person, and you won't need to do it multiple times.

Proper Flagging Guidelines: Every site has a different commenting policy - be sure to review the policy for this site before flagging comments. In general these types of comments should be flagged:

  • Spam
  • Ones violating this site's commenting policy
  • Clearly unrelated
  • Personal attacks on others
Comments should not be flagged for:
  • Disagreeing with the content
  • Being in a dispute with the commenter

Popular Comment Threads



 Local Weather 
Search archives:


Copyright © 2024 Express Publishing Inc.   Terms of Use   Privacy Policy
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.