Masonic Foundation for Children

Addiction, Depression/Suicide, Eating Disorders, Violence/Bullying -- We continue to assist schools in successfully combating these serious issues in our youth.  Help us help kids.

Why do we exist?

The mission of the Masonic Foundation for Children is to establish the "Masonic Model" Student Assistance Training (MMSAT) program in schools, which will help the youth of this country lead productive, useful, and healthy lives.

Most experts agree that a successful strategy for dealing with drug abuse contains four approaches - awareness, treatment, enforcement, and prevention. The Foundation believes prevention is the most critical of the four. Prevention is, hands down, the most important component of a successful solution. Awareness efforts inform and educate the public. Treatment programs provide assistance to those already addicted. Enforcement activities curb the supplies and penalize the suppliers. These three, however, only treat the results of substance abuse problems. Only prevention stops use and abuse before it can get started. It interrupts the addictive cycle which may have gone on for generations in a family. Another important plus -- prevention programs can be implemented for a fraction of the cost of treatment, enforcement or publicity programs.

What have you accomplished?

Experience with schools with "Masonic Model" trained teams in place shows that most children who are identified as potentially at risk, or who are in the early stages of addiction, can be successfully steered away from the addictive cycle. The prevention approach works.

Success stories include the high school student "Joan" who had become addicted to narcotics in reaction to living in a home where her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. A fellow student referred Joan to her school's Core Team which successfully intervened and obtained the appropriate help Joan needed which shortly ended her dependency on drugs.

Another success story is about "Tom" who was a delinquent high school student who actually decided to go to a different high school, because his school "cared too much" (they had an established MMSAT Core Team). After two more years at the other high school where Tom continued with his downward spiral, he decided to return to his original school and with the help of his school's Core Team he is now free of addiction. He became a straight "A" student in spite of having to double up on his courses (to make up for lost time) and he graduated last June.

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