Allison Jarvis has been with Bacon Street ever since she interned with us over 6 years ago, and has touched the lives of many youth in our community in that time. As our Prevention Director, she works hard to provide youth and families with tools that promote mental health and empower youth to make healthy choices about substance use. Allison was driven to enter this work as both someone who had her own struggles as a young adult and as a mother of a young adult herself. A lover of cycling and the outdoors, if she’s not at Bacon Street there’s a good chance you’ll find her at the Bicycle Co-Op of Williamsburg.

What drew you to the Prevention side of Bacon Street?

Prevention work wasn’t something I was intentionally seeking out as a career because, honestly, it wasn’t something I was even aware of back then. My exposure to it through my internship with Bacon Street’s prevention program made me realize its importance and how, potentially, my own path could have been impacted had I received these sorts of resources. I want that opportunity for others. To quote Bishop Demond Tutu, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” Prevention work is upstream work. 

What do you like about working with youth and what is challenging about it?

Maybe it’s because (not so) deep down inside, I’m still a big kid, but my lightheartedness helps me connect with youth. I just love cracking that first joke with them and seeing their reactions change from “Oh, she’s just another old person telling me what to do” to “Oh, wow, this lady actually cares and she gets me.” Working with youth reminds me to not take things so seriously as well because adults are prone to overcomplicating things. 

The most challenging part of working with youth is that while I have some influence in their lives and the decisions they make, ultimately, they are the ones who are responsible for their actions. I can share information and give them tools to help them through challenging situations, but I cannot make those decisions for them when they’re presented with, for example, peer pressure. 

Prevention has had a lot of different programs through the years. Do you have a favorite?

I guess what it must feel like to have multiple children is how I feel about the many prevention programs we’ve had over the years. Each one of them is so uniquely special that I wouldn’t feel whole without them all. 

Connecting directly with the parents and caregivers in the Strengthening Families Program 10-14 and being able to share how this program helped me in my own role as a mother and seeing how other families are benefitting is so rewarding. 

Providing REVIVE! trainings around recognizing the signs and responding to an opioid overdose – especially my trainings and interactions with people who use drugs – is deeply meaningful to me. I have lost loved ones and it is so important to me to connect with people in recovery and to let them hear the message that they matter. That their lives matter, and that they are worthy of being free to live a life filled with hope for their futures. 

CATCH My Breath is the perfect example of a program that works to catch youth before initiation into vaping which, very easily, can expand to the use of other dangerous substances. This is a newer program to our department, but it feels like we are making a broad impact and I love going into the schools to work with youth. 

All of that said, the most unique program we offered and one we built from the (camp)ground up, was the Bridges Project. You can’t get more connected than being around dozens of high school kids, white water rafting, hiking, biking, cooking, camping, etc. together for weeks leading up to the school year program where the older students mentored the ones coming into high school. Getting texts from someone who passed their driving exam, got into their post-high school program of choice, made the decision to not get into a fight because they remembered what their mentor said to them, prom pictures, etc. just made these kids feel like family.

I will cherish each of the programs we had, currently have, and will have in the future. 

What’s some advice you’d give to parents of young people right now based on your experiences working in Prevention?

It can be really hard for us to not take things personally as parents when our youth express different opinions or views of the world and how they should navigate through it. We have our hard-earned wisdom that we want to share with them and we want to protect them from discomfort, but growth isn’t always comfortable and that’s okay. Their pulling away or developing different ideals are very much age-appropriate. Allowing them to express themselves – safely – helps them to know that their opinions matter and, therefore, they matter.