For Release: July 1, 1997

Contact: Terri Bisson 277-3434

Bill Pett 277-3434 ext.4417

PROVIDENCE - Starting Monday June 30 in some communities and Monday July 7 in others, Youth Litter Corps Clean Teams, funded by the RI Department of Environmental Management's Ocean State Cleanup and Recycling (OSCAR) Program will be cleaning up litter in 28 communities across the state, some under municipal auspices and some operated through non-profit agencies. It's hot and dirty work, so leadership skills are needed.

Indeed, leadership training is required, said OSCAR program manager Terri Bisson. So, the 34 men and women on the front lines supervising the Clean Teams listened intently to Mark Sauriol from Donovan Associates in Cranston, brought in by Bisson to train them in basic leadership skills and conflict resolution.

Before the session started, Acting DEM Director Frederick Vincent told the supervisors, "You are important front line workers, representing DEM in your communities. You will be very visible this summer and we appreciate your work as our ambassadors."

Jumping right into the training, Sauriol said, "If the ship is sinking you can't call a committee meeting. You have to use situational leadership - adjust your leadership style for the situation." After some basics, the supervisors broke into small groups to role-play different kinds of bad supervisors, such as Daisy the Dictator, Clueless Cathy and Steve the Stud, while others impersonated difficult workers. Sauriol, who has led similar exercises for the Diocese of Providence for the last nine years, used the role-playing to show what can go wrong on the job site and elicit participants' ideas on how to avoid and/or deal with problems. Ideas like: "You've got to set the rules right away, let them know what their boundaries are. Take care of your work crew so they can do their jobs - make sure they get enough to drink on a hot day. Don't be too mean or too soft. Don't get into power struggles."

And, Sauriol told them: "Lead by example. Remember that respect is a two-way street. Get the job done but let them be young and don't expect perfection from them - or from yourself."

The supervisors saw the training as a good preparation for their summers. CCRI student Mike McVey of Burrillville, a supervisor returning for his third year, said, "It's important for the new supervisors to be prepared to keep in control of their crews. That can be difficult, especially if you're young yourself. My first year I was one year older than my oldest worker."

Nicole Hatch, a University of New Haven student from East Greenwich and a new supervisor said she learned "how to handle certain types of situations that I thought I knew how to handle but I didn't."

Mark Trahan, a Roger Williams University student from Bristol who will be working in Portsmouth with a crew of disabled adults from the James L. Maher Center said, "I learned the nuts and bolts of how the program works. It was also good to meet the other supervisors who will be doing the same job."

Art Burritt an employee of the Northern Rhode Island Community Mental Health Center who will be working in Woonsocket with a crew of teens from the center said, "I learned that I have to make it fun and foster relationships among the kids and with me. There's a job to get done but there are also other important benefits."

The supervisors also know how important their jobs are. McVey said, "It gives me a better awareness of how much trash really is out there. And I've seen things I didn't expect to see: bags of dirty diapers, condoms, even a syringe. I didn't expect to see things like that in Burrillville."

The jobs can have other values as well. Burritt said, "Our mental health center started working with the Youth Litter Corps last year as a way to give some of our clients structure during the summer, instead of giving them support during the school year and then dropping them for two months."

And Trahan said, "The Youth Litter Corps is a way of bringing our clients out, to give them something more interesting to do than the contract work they do in the sheltered workshop setting. They earn extra money for out-of-state vacations and they get out in the community where people can see what good workers they are. It also reminds people that there's work they should do - picking up after themselves."