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Project Extreme is a full service non-profit organization providing innovative programming
and solutions for Jewish teens at-risk, their families and communities. Project Extreme
uses a combination of experiential and intellectual learning opportunities to provide the
social, educational and emotional support that our teens in need require and benefit from.
Project Extreme hosts a broad array of short and longer duration programs designed to assist
teens in need and their families in addressing and overcoming the various challenges they are
facing by providing them with:
- Social support
- Life-skills training
- Positive /healthy environment
- Fun and safe activities
Each of the programs in the Project Extreme portfolio has been designed by a multidisciplinary
team of professionals to ensure maximum therapeutic, fun, social, and positive outcomes. Each
of Project Extreme's programs undergo continuous evaluation and assessment in an effort to
constantly provide the most effective, unique and relevant programming for teens today.
Project Extreme programs are open to all Jewish teens in need irrespective of their Jewish
affiliation.
Project Extreme's 4 Core Principals
1. STRENGTHS-BASED PERSPECTIVE
A strengths-based perspective is essential in working and connecting with teens. Research
has supported the idea that recognizing a teen's strength contributes to building their
self-esteem, resulting in positive thoughts regarding their own feelings of self worth.
It is through positive reinforcement, such as congratulating a teen after completing a
difficult outdoor task on a Camp Extreme trip or recognizing acts of kindness done to others,
that lays the building blocks to creating a trusting relationship with the teen.
A strengths-based perspective coupled with other supportive measures provides the solid
foundation of Project Extreme's successful model.
2. SKILLS BUILDING
The second core principal, skills building, contributes greatly to the teens' ability to learn
how to cope, communicate and function in their everyday life with peers and family. By
integrating life learnable lessons, enhancing the teens' basic communication skills,
including fostering appropriate verbal and non-verbal communication styles within a framework of fun
activities. During processing sessions that occur on a daily basis during the summer programs,
the teens slowly begin to integrate what they are being taught in this safe environment,
that will generalize to their everyday lives.
3. INDIVIDUALIZED CARE
The third, a one to one participant/counselor ratio, is essential to the success of our program.
On a daily basis, teens may experience anxieties, pressures and feelings of loneliness. Having
the opportunity to reach out to that one person, their counselor, with whom the teen has formed
a close and trusting relationship, can be the single tool in preventing the teen from making
inappropriate and at times risky decisions.
4. LONG-TERM FOLLOW-UP
The fourth core principal constitutes real, meaningful and long term follow up and is reflected
by the requirement that counselors sign a social contract to maintain contact with the teen
throughout adolescence and into adulthood. This long-term commitment sends a loud and clear
message to the teen and their family that Project Extreme is not a short term, band-aid, but
rather a longer term lifetime support.
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