Join our giving campaign! Help Build Life-giving, Supportive Relationships

Building life-giving, real, supportive relationships is not an easy thing to do. Turmoil and conflict are part of the human condition. Sweeten Life Systems helps!

We train people in organizations, businesses, teams, and families to live better lives.

Think of Kelsey, a young woman who is struggling to become a nurse. She was raised in poverty by unstable parents and is now living with her grandmother. Kelsey knows she wants a better life and is fighting her way out of poverty, one step at a time. Her abusive past was translating to the workplace in the way that she was treating other students in her clinical.

Fortunately, Kelsey's clinical instructor, Debra, is using the skills she learned through Sweeten Life Systems to teach Kelsey and hundreds of other nursing students to relate with genuineness, respect, empathy, and warmth. Instead of carrying dysfunctional relationship habits into the workplace, they are learning healthy relationship habits to use in their profession and at home.

Or, think of sixteen year old Makayla. She is a student at a last chance school in Cincinnati who has been paired with one of our mentors. She was interacting with her mentor who shared a photo of her husband, children, and grandchildren. Makayla asked, "What do you mean husband? Is he like my mom's boyfriends?"

Our mentor said, "Well, not exactly. We were married 31 years ago and had three children. They all married and have kids. Each man is a husband, and the women are wives. My husband and I have been with each other for all those years. We do not change like boyfriends and girlfriends."

Through her mentoring relationship, Makayla is receiving love and care from a positive role model who understands the small steps that lead to big change. Over the last two years we equipped about 100 adult volunteers, plus the staff, to better relate to the students and encourage them to overcome the issues that face them.

Since 1994, Dr Gary Sweeten and his team at Sweeten Life Systems have developed tools and training to enable people to live a life full of supportive relationships. Relationships that can be trusted. Mutual relationships that bring joy. Relationships that allow people to develop their talents and strengths. Relationships not mired in the past, but flourishing in the future. We reach:

• Families of every age
• Friends - old and new
• Care teams - multidiscipline professionals
• Care agencies

A glimpse of the impact Sweeten Life is currently having

Training Mentors to Work with at-Risk Teens:

We are training mentors to work with at-risk teens in Cincinnati Public Schools. School officials say their classroom environment has improved. Weekly small group mentoring sessions have made students feel more comfortable and secure.

"They are speaking freely and respectfully, listening to each other. It's a huge accomplishment," school staffers agreed.
DeShawn kept his head down, avoided eye contact and would not speak to anyone at the school. Now he is smiling, looking teachers and students in the eye and talking. This can be attributed to the dedication and modeling of his mentor.

Developing Resources and Tools to Help Families Who Have Children with Special Needs:

We are training agency professionals in Ohio to use the tools that have brought hope and healing to families all around the world. There was no simple way for the families and caregivers of children with special needs to share their needs, insights and wisdom regarding their child with agencies and schools. Now, our Family Resource Builder™ process has demonstrated in extensive testing by the Butler County Help Me Grow agency to bring their needs to light.

"The Family Resource Builder™ is a godsend. We normally try to offer a Patient and Family whatever is on our menu, not what is on their mind. We now know exactly what the person needs and wants, and can assist them in getting it." Scott Osterfeld, M.S., Coordinator of Community Outreach And Engagement, Butler County Ohio Board Of Developmental Disabilities

Faculty and students at Xavier University were trained by Sweeten Life Systems staff to use the Family Resource Builder™ process and were able to help 100% of the families they worked with set goals for a more positive future. Feedback from the parents included:

"I am so grateful to be doing this",
"I love that we are creating this plan",
"No one has asked me these things before"
"It feels good to be asked my opinion".
"These plans make me feel hopeful"

The permanent and increasing impact that our methods bring -

The Seeds Planted During Years of Training Others Around the World are Multiplying:

SINGAPORE - We recently received a newly published book from our student and good friend in Singapore, Timothy K. Hsi. Here is an excerpt from the introduction in his new book, A Basic Guide to Peer Helping:

When I first joined the Singapore Management University (SMU) as its first counselor almost a decade ago, I remember being tasked by the then Dean of Students, Prof Low Aik Meng, to think of ways to mange the emotional and psychological health of the students within the University. That directive filled me with trepidation because the thought, which kept echoing in my mind, was, "How is one counseller going to be able to address the emotional and psychological needs of over 2500 students?"

"Looking back, I am glad that I was given a seemingly impossible task because it encouraged me to look beyond the usual approaches toward mental health programming and be bold in exploring novel ways in providing mental health services to the student community. I my search for approaches, I was introduced to the idea of peer helping by Dr. Gary Sweeten, who happened to be conducting a series of counselling-related trainings in Singapore during that period of time. With that seed of an idea and 20 brave, young pioneers – we embarked on a learning journey which has continued throughout the years, with each batch of peer helpers improving on the work done by the previous ones."

RUSSIA - Few nations need a Christian revolution as much as Russia. Their atheist revolution that began in 1917 and lasted 70 years attempted to wipe Christianity out, but only forced it underground. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church". Tertullian

Just before the Iron Curtain came down, God gave us a vision, which I doubted, to go to Russia and begin a revival and restoration of Christianity. We needed to find and equip leaders capable of leading a godly revolution and repair the damage of atheism. That was difficult because Communists had killed so many key people. In 1992 Dr. Galina Chentsova, MD, Psychiatrist, came here to be trained in leading such an enormous task. Two years later she brought some 25 interfaith leaders together at the Saltikovka Baptist Retreat Center for a seminar on reviving, renewing, and restoring God's people. A meeting of people from different denominations was rare or unique. They usually warred openly.

Fast forward to 2016, twenty four years later. Galina was chatting with a young graduate of their Care and Counseling School who also has a degree in secular counseling. Galina knew she was the Pastor's daughter at Saltikovka and asked if her mother's maiden name was Vasiliev*. She said yes and asked why. Your grandfather, the head of the Russian Baptist Union, was our host in 1994. The young lady was stunned, because Baptists in those days rejected all psychology and interfaith ideas.

But God has blessed us as peacemakers in Russia! Three generations of Baptists, Russian Orthodox, Pentecostals, Reformed, Lutherans, Catholics and Methodists are cooperating to keep the fires of Revival and Revolution going strong. The SLS Model is to discover and equip nationals to minister and evangelize locally. We do not send Americans overseas to do what nationals can do better and less expensively. We continue to support Galina and train key people to multiply themselves through their own churches and friends. Now we have three generations of healthy, mature, men and women sharing the Good News and overcoming 70 years of atheism.

*The pastor's daughter's last name has been replaced with a common name to protect the family identity.

And, there are so many other places where we are seeing the multiplication effect of coming along people and teaching them to live and teach healthy relationship principles. It leads to healing and growth.

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