AUBURN - Facilitators with the Auburn EPIC (Every Person Influences Children) program were finally given the opportunity to practice what they preach.

Since the national organization opened an Auburn office in March 2001, volunteer facilitators have followed EPIC's dictum, allowing those seeking help in parenting skills to discover, through communication with their peer group, one of the greatest assets any group member can possess.

In their thoughts and concerns, their disappointments and triumphs, those attending the workshops have found they are not alone.

On Wednesday night, occupying the same chairs that members of more than 200 families occupied in 2006, the facilitators finally had a chance to experience the same thing.

“Oh it's great. It's just great - because we get to see them individually, but they never have been able to come together as a group to meet one another,” said Dawn Van Orman, EPIC program assistant. “We'd like to start a little newsletter - there is a national one, but not one for us locally. As a result of this, we'll start.”

According to Sharon DeRusha, EPIC regional director, more than 100 facilitators have participated in the workshops conducted at the Auburn site since it opened.

By design, they act as moderators, guiding, but not constricting, the exchange of advice or experiences that ensues between those attending the workshops, all of whom have the option of remaining anonymous.

The concept of the reunion, said DeRusha, was to afford the volunteers the opportunity to exchange their own experiences, and be given a status report regarding EPIC.

“Of the facilitators we've trained over the years, there are about 30 of them still active,” DeRusha said. “We wanted to bring them up on what's been happening over the years and bring them up on what's been happening nationally, and what that means locally.

“We just want to let them know EPIC is growing, and we still need them. We're just grateful they have stuck with us - if it wasn't for them, there would be no EPIC program.”

New developments this year include a new literacy program entitled Ready, Set, Read which will focus on methods of teaching children to read and the opening of two EPIC offices, one in Syracuse, the other in Rochester, which are expected to expand the operations in the local office.

Included in the seven workshops conducted in 2006 at Auburn, were Parenting Infant and Toddler; Parenting Young Children; Parenting Young Adolescents; and Teen Parenting.

Van Orman shared her excitement, particularly about the result of the teen parenting workshop, with those attending the reunion.

“We have a lot of new teen parents in Auburn that need help,” she said. “It was so awesome. These young people were so much in need for camaraderie. We had two counselors come in about anger management and those kids were on the edge of their seats. Then we had members from the Red Cross visit, and they were on the edge of their seats again. I get goose bumps when I think of how the reacted.”

While not a prerequisite of being a facilitator, most are employed in human services. Doreena Xedis, who helps recruit and enroll children in the Head Start Program for the Cayuga-Seneca Community Action Agency, has participated in the Auburn EPIC program since its inception. She considers the workshops unique and innovative.

“Everybody wants to know how other parents behave,” she said. “Here, they come together and find out they're not different. Parents are coming into a workshop where they are the experts on their family. It becomes a networking thing. And it gives them a level of respect that maybe you don't get from the teacher-student type of forum. What's really rewarding is when the parents become really comfortable. They begin to look for the people they made friends with at the workshop the week before.”