New Community Centers Celebrate Project IF, Harvard Graduate School of Education's Youth Mentoring Program

On September 26 and 28, First Realty Management Corp. will host opening ceremonies for two new community centers at Brandywyne Village in East Boston and High Point Village in Roslindale, two sites of Project IF: Inventing the Future, a multifaceted youth mentoring program developed by Professor Michael Nakkula at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital and First Realty Management Corp. The community centers were designed in part to provide meeting spaces for Project IF mentors and tutors and will also feature computer learning centers, established through HUD Neighborhood Networks Program, as well as space for community meetings, activities, and special events.

Project IF matches mentors, tutors, and counselors with youth in public schools and affordable housing developments. Grounded in Nakkula's invention-based theory for helping youth, Project IF departs from prevention and intervention-based therapy--which focuses on diagnosing kids for current or future problems--and instead assesses kids for their talents and potential.

Michael Nakkula developed his "invention-based" counseling model while working with urban youth in schools around the city of Boston. He had higher success rates with his students when he focused more on their potential for success and less on the failures and pathologies that might lead to destructive behavior and problems down the road. Nakkula also discovered that offering counseling or mentoring to all kids, rather than only providing services to those kids who had been identified as at-risk, reduced the stigma attached to counseling and allowed all kids to envision or invent their futures and see themselves as potentially successful.

In addition to the community sites of Brandywyne Village and High Point Village, Project IF provides mentors and counselors working in Nakkula's invention model to the Edwards Middle School and Charlestown High School, both in Charlestown.

First Realty Management Corp. (FRM), the property management company for both the Brandywyne and High Point apartment communities, has over 40 years of experience in residential management of rental housing communities and condominiums. FRM was among the first companies to manage privately owned apartment developments under the National Housing Act of 1961 and pioneered the concept of providing resident services programs at its affordable properties in 1975. In 1996, FRM's High Point Village was recognized as the Outstanding Multi-Family Community in New England in the National Affordable Housing Management Association's Community of Quality Competition; Brandywyne Village achieved the same honor a year later in 1997.

Michael Nakkula is Assistant Professor of Education in the Risk & Prevention Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the author, with Sharon Ravitch, of Matters of Interpretation: Reciprocal Transformation in Therapeutic and Developmental Relationships With Youth (Jossey-Bass Publishers; Publication Date: 1998).

For More Information

Contact Christine Sanni at (617) 496-5873 for scheduling information for Michael Nakkula and for more information on Project IF and the opening ceremonies at Brandywyne and High Point Villages.