Our History
In April of 1997, Shannon Wendt was approached by Kim Conroy to build an abstinence program. LifeChoices had been doing a few, by request, one-time presentations in a few schools – usually done by Kim Conroy (CEO at the time) or Rita Lawson (Client Services Director at that time – now Director of Development). They felt the need for a more organized approach. Shannon was given a few limp boxes of pitiful brochures and bad hand-outs and wished good-luck on building a program.
There weren’t that many curricula to choose from back then. Shannon found a brochure for WAIT Training and thought it looked great, but they wouldn’t send her a preview copy. They expected her to fly to Colorado, pay all her expenses, pay for the training, THEN decide if she liked it. After that, Shannon would be the only one who could teach it at LifeChoices. They didn’t have a training of trainers program. [In fact, there are only a few of trainers of trainers that don’t work directly for the company even today.]
In June of 1997, Shannon then found Choosing the Best. It didn’t require any training, and it looked good.
In July of 1997, Shannon had her first school board meeting at Carl Junction.
In the fall of 1997, LifeChoices taught in our first 2 schools: Carl Junction and Seneca. Dan Mitchell, Tony Salva and Rhonda Shepherd were some of the first presenters.
That fall, LifeChoices wrote for local Health Department grants and got two: $15,000 and $7,500 – we felt so wealthy.
In the spring of 1998, Title V money had been out for a year, but we were just watching it too see how restrictive/invasive it would be with LifeChoices policies. It took some fancy talking to convince the board that we should receive federal funds. After applying, the first grant we got was $36,000.
From 2004-2007 we were funded through a federal Community Based Abstinence Education grant for $800,000 per year (for 3 years) – $400,00 of which is going directly to VR program – the other $400,000 is contracted to our partners Barceda Families, The Boys and Girls Club and The Bridge.
Currently, we have begun partnering with schools who are paying for the consumable costs of having VR. Private donors have also kicked in funds to assist in this. LifeChoices donors and other state and private grants have assisted us as we seek long-term funding that will allow us to be self-sustaining.
Each semester, the number of students we see and school sites our program visits changes. The average is 5,000-7,000 students per year and 30-40 school sites per year.