Marta Nielson, Orcas Island Prevention Partnership’s (OIPP) new Executive Director, says that former Director Moriah Armstrong will be a hard act to follow.

But Nielson comes to OIPP with a great resume of training and experience in teaching, nonprofit management and community organizing.

She arrived on Orcas Island last year, after seven year’s teaching experience after earning a Masters in Partnership Education at Goddard College.

Prior to that, she worked as Field Director with a large Girl Scout Council in New Hampshire and Vermont and the Council on Aging in southeast Vermont, where she was Special Projects Director. In those positions she managed volunteers, built coalitions, wrote and monitored grants, directed boards and organized fundraisers.

Raised in the military vagabond tradition, Nielson has lived all over the world, including nearly six years in Tokyo.

Nielson says OIPP will continue to build OIPP’s Board of Trustees, who are the community organization represented in the partnership and to extend community outreach by strengthening the role of the OIPP’s community committee.

Heather Stansbury, OIPP’s Social Norms Director, will be “wrapping up the parent Social Norms campaign throughout the fall and winter with an extensive media campaign, emphasizing that a majority of Orcas parents engage in positive supervision, have an open relationship with their children concerning underage drinking and drug use and exhibit healthy behaviors themselves.”

She foresees an increased emphasis on community efforts to reach the adult population through OIPP’s community committee, led by Dixie Walmsley. The committee will be taking an active role in the upcoming Community Campaign, using a Social Norms survey of the at-large Orcas community. Nielson says, “We hope to include, for the first time, issues that involve our elder population.”

Point Blank – an OIPP-sponsored youth leadership club – includes high school students who will work both with younger kids and in the adult community.

The Orcas Parent Network (OPEN) provides contact information for parents to support each other to provide appropriate supervision.

“Actually, there is a shift towards peer support among parents as well as kids,” Nielson points out.

This week, she will join a delegation from Orcas Island public schools to the Prevention Summit in Yakima Oct. 16 through 18. Students Kati Dawn Pinardi, Jeanie Tran, Brook Bruland, Adrien Erickson and Bobby Lowry will attend the conference, representing Point Blank.

The Orcas team will participate in workshops to learn how to plan and implement a community project when they return to the island. They will also participate in a Service Learning project in Yakima during the conference and a Prevention Jam – an event designed to inspire, empower and motivate youth to speak out and take positive action in their communities. “Kids are ready to engage and talk about real issues,” she says. “There’s nothing more exciting to me than when you see that spark in kids’ eyes when they’re empowered and excited.”

Julie Pinardi will also attend as OIPP’s Teen Youth Advisor, as well as Ken Salt and Cassandra Whellams, OIPP Board President.