The name Destination Imagination says it all. This volunteer organization’s mission is to teach kids the creative process while working with a team to develop a solution to a problem. The teams may choose a challenge from a series of topics: technical, scientific, engineering, fine arts, improvisational, and service learning. Additionally, there is a Rising Stars! program for pre-school through second grade that is non-competitive. The teams compete at a local and state level, culminating in the annual Global Finals tournament. This year, there are three – yes, you read it correctly, three! – Tri-Town teams heading to the Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee on May 24.

Going to Global Finals is no small feat for the teams. Not only do they need to excel at their regional and state tournaments, but they also must raise the funds to travel to the site of the final tournament.

Each of the local winning teams will be fundraising over the next month to offset the cost of the trip, which can be as much as $1,400 per participant. The teams pay for registration, lodging, and food at the University of Tennessee campus, in addition to their travel costs and shipping of sets and props.

Sarah Cecil is the team manager for the Lightning Bolts, a group of seven fifth-graders from Rochester Memorial School, which chose a Fine Arts challenge for their project. The team placed first among three teams at the regional tournament at Dennis Yarmouth High School, and tied for second place at the state finals at Worcester Polytechnic Institute against nine other teams.

This is the third year the team has competed together, and Cecil says she just stands back and lets them work.

“They have all learned to work well together; they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” said Cecil. “If someone is melting down or struggling, someone else will help bring them back to the project.”

The participants develop their project entirely on their own, and there are no wrong solutions or ideas. It is an open-ended process, Cecil added.

“It’s thinking outside the box. The kids can make it whatever they want it to be; it’s driven entirely by them,” Cecil said.

The team developed an eight-minute presentation in which they were to pick a color and determine its meaning and make one element of the story disappear. The team chose the color red, and wrote a story in which the meaning of the color – anger – was illustrated through the impact of its disappearance from a fictional town on the town’s inhabitants.

The team was required to develop the characters, costumes, set and lighting, all to further the plot of their story. One of the Lightening Bolts team members Eva Hartley told Cecil, “[I] like Destination Imagination most because it gives me the opportunity to do things and try stuff that I didn’t think I could do before.” Most recently, Hartley was using a power saw to cut plywood, a task she may not have tried on her own.

Sometimes parents are puzzled by the idea that there are no wrong answers in solving the challenges, but it appears the kids’ creativity thrives under these conditions – Tri-Town teams have made it to the global finals four times over the past five years.

The DI Dazzlers (and sparkle) is a team of sixth and seventh-grade Rochester students, which recently won their regional and state competitions against seven other teams in their age group, to qualify for the Global Finals. The team meets weekly all winter to develop and create their project.

DI Dazzlers (and sparkle) team manager Jennifer Hunter underscored the value of participating in the program.

“It’s a great way to build relationships and work together as a team,” said Hunter. “My daughter isn’t the sports type, so this is a great alternative and still allows her to work as a part of a team.”

The team chose the engineering challenge, in which they were charged with designing and building a load-bearing structure using only balsa wood and glue. Their creation, at less than nine inches tall and weighing no more than 50 grams, at the state tournament successfully held 530 pounds before breaking.

Team member Emma Jones described her dedication to the program when she said, “I love Destination Imagination because it gives me a chance to use my imagination and creativity in order to solve problems. I am able to work together with my teammates to solve challenges that I might not ever try on my own.”

Hunter said being part of Destination Imagination “builds great character and helps make [the participants] so well rounded.”

The veteran Destination Imagination team H Squared is heading to the Global Finals this year for the third time. This close-knit team, made up of three sophomores and two juniors from Old Rochester Regional High School, has been working together for four years, with two of the members having been on the same team together for the last eight years.

Team manager Tina Rood has been managing the team since its inception. She also is the coordinator for the district, working to recruit new participants and team managers.

Rood’s co-manager for the team, Dr. Kerry Bowman, passed away last summer, and Bowman’s family created a fund to help ensure that the Tri-Town Destination Imagination program continued to expand and succeed.

The H Squared team chose the Fine Arts challenge, researched the meaning of a color, and developed an original story in which the color disappeared. As Rood described it, the love story centered on a cartoonist who suffered from unrequited love and in response made the color red disappear from his cartoons.

The team developed costumes and sets for the story, and won a Renaissance Award for the non-human element of the story: a pencil that functioned as the narrator.

The Renaissance Award is given in recognition of excellence and extraordinary effort in engineering, design or performance.

The team was given additional accolades at the regional tournament, receiving the Spirit of DI award, which Rood says was given “in honor of the team’s perseverance this year.”

Rood extolled the values of the Destination Imagination commitment, saying, “We get to the end of the year, and we see what these teams have created, and we say wow! And then when we start again next year, we ask how can we do it again, and the kids do – and it’s better than last year!”

Teams begin working on their challenges in October and work through March of the following year, working weekends and school vacations, putting in an incredible amount of time with their teams to develop their solution to the chosen challenge.

It can be overwhelming for new team managers, Rood noted, and as the district coordinator she works with other veteran team managers to mentor new recruits, helping the managers through the process and guiding them on how to best facilitate their team’s efforts.

“Once you get bitten by the bug, you say to yourself, ‘Oh, my gosh, I have to do this again!’”

Going to the regional, state, and Global Finals is a reward for a year of hard work. Teams have become experts in their particular challenge, and by going to the tournaments they get to see teams from all over their state, and ultimately from throughout the country and the world, present unique solutions from a whole different perspective.

“There are as many unique solutions as there are teams,” Rood said.

Each of the three Tri-Town teams will be hosting fundraising events throughout April and May to ease the financial burden to the participants. Also, donors have the opportunity to “Flamingo Flock” a friend or neighbor. From now until May 20, for a donation of $20, a flock of 20 flamingos will visit the front yard for 24 hours of a person of the donor’s choosing. For information about these or future events, call Lightning Bolts team manager Sarah Cecil at 508-322-0226.

The DI Dazzlers (and sparkle) team has a GoFundMe page: www.gofundme.com/send-the-di-dazzlers-to-globals. They also will be hosting a raffle with prizes from local businesses, and other community-based fundraisers, such as a car wash on Saturday, May 13, from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm at the Mattapoisett Fire Station. The team has set up a Youcaring Compassionate Crowdfunding page at www.youcaring.com/2017ORRDIGlobals. The H Squared team will also be collecting donations through direct solicitation in front of local businesses.

Donations for each of the teams can be made directly to Destination Imagination, Inc. at 1111 South Union Avenue, Cherry Hill, NJ 08002 Attn. GF Donation Dept. Make checks payable to Destination Imagination and include the team number on the check: DI Dazzlers #119-30259; Lightning Bolts #119-58196; H Squared #119-89977. Donations are tax deductible if made before May 1.

Hunter’s daughter Isabella reflected on her team’s achievement: “I do DI because it allows me to use my imagination and I enjoy performing. This year has been incredible. I never thought we would make it this far. I can’t wait for Globals!”

By Sarah French Storer

As the opioid addiction epidemic spreads across the country, and even takes root in our very own Tri-Town, the issue of addiction – opioids, alcohol, nicotine, all addictions – has become a priority for area public health employees who serve the Tri-Town citizens.

Especially susceptible to addiction are the youth of Tri-Town, and as recent youth risk surveys at the junior and high school have shown, the risk is present and very real as young adults make poor decisions to try addictive substances long before the development of their brain’s frontal lobes can dictate otherwise.

Reverend Catherine Harper at Saint Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Marion has seen firsthand the effects that addiction has on the youth of the community and their families struggling to support loved ones afflicted with addiction. Harper, along with Public Health Nurse Kathleen Downey, has joined the addiction awareness movement in Tri-Town to get residents, especially children, informed on addiction and how parents and caregivers can arm themselves with the knowledge to keep their children safe from the perils of addiction.

A few of Harper’s parishioners had approached her, seeking guidance and support for their families struggling with a family member with addiction.

“These parishioners and myself decided we wanted to bring some education and awareness to our parish community and out into the community to bring awareness of what’s going on,” said Harper. Many in Tri-Town communities, Harper said, believe, “It’s not me, it doesn’t have anything to do to me,” said Harper, “and not realizing that it’s happening around the corner.”

“I was not aware really of how bad the crisis was, and seeing the need and trying to encourage our parishioners to get involved,” said Harper. “Now we’ve all come together to address addition.”

The first step was a survey amongst prominent town leaders – elected and appointed officials, religious leaders, law enforcement, and educators – who are in cornerstone positions of the community.

“What came back on every single survey was, pay attention to the high school kids, the junior high school kids, go back to the schools,” said Harper. “And it’s all substances, not just opioids.”

The youth risk assessment survey soon followed, which returned shocking statistics on junior and senior high school student experimentation with addictive substances, the impetus for the establishing of the community-wide group Healthy Tri-Town Coalition, whose aim is to increase awareness of addiction and other matters that threaten the health of Tri-Town citizens.

According to Downey, Tri-Town has seen its share of tragedy caused by addiction. “There have been deaths in the Tri-Town,” Downey said, and the use of Narcan (Nalaxone) within the community to save lives from opioid overdose.

“There are families that are deeply involved,” said Downey. “Overdoses, kids in the school system…. We haven’t lost a student to an overdose, but we have lost recent graduates, which makes it all the more compelling that we have to get involved.”

Downey offered some scary statistics: just one dose of an addictive substance of any kind to a child age 13 and under raises that child’s chance of future addiction by 25% and up to 50%, depending on the study cited.

“That is scary,” said Downey. These substances include seemingly harmless medications like cough syrup with codeine, and Percocet often prescribed for pain.

To drive home the message that every child – your child – is susceptible to addiction, the coalition has brought in renowned speaker Dr. Ruth Potee on “The Developing Brain and Addiction,” on Thursday, April 27, in the ORR High School auditorium.

Potee is one of Massachusetts’ leading experts on the physiology of addiction and the teenage brain.

The coalition believes the attendance of ALL parents in Tri-Town is critical to parents understanding the risk factors and how to protect their children.

Whether the addictive element is drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sugar, video games, or caffeine, the understanding of how addition “re-wires” the brain is essential in order to prevent it. Dr. Potee will offer this information and more, said Downey, who encourages both parents and children to come to the event.

“She had a very powerful dialog, just talking about, as a family member, the hurt and the pain that they went through,” said Downey. “She held everybody. She engages the audience. She’s really impressive.”

The risk to opioid addiction in particular is of increasing importance now, Downey said, as powerful and deadly opioids have started appearing in cocaine and marijuana, which have caused the overdoses of young people in Brockton, as reported by medical staff at Brockton Hospital, Downey pointed out.

These victims, said Downey, claimed never to have tried opioids, yet Narcan was able to recover the victims from an overdose – and Narcan only works on opioids.

“This is not just starting,” said Downey. “We’re going to continue to see more and more cases and anybody who thinks this does not affect this community, they’re nuts.”

A key element to protecting kids, said Downey, is to reach them younger than we have thus far, all the way into pre-school.

“And erase the stigma,” said Downey. “We have to address the stigma.”

“I’m just praying that kids and parents will come to this,” said Harper.

When people finally open their eyes to addiction, said Downey, they wonder how they missed it up until then.

“It’s just being open to it and saying, you know, I’m not going to be surprised,” said Downey.

Downey wants to see all Tri-Town teens at the April 27 presentation.

“We hope to fill that auditorium,” Downey said.

The Dr. Ruth Potee presentation of “The Developing Brain and Addiction” is Thursday, April 27, at 7:00 pm at the Old Rochester Regional High School Auditorium. The event is free to the public. Refreshments will be served. For further information, visit www.healthytritowncoalition.org.

By Jean Perry