What is Discovery Dating?

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISCOVERY DATING^©

 Wise Women Gathering Place researched the issues around teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, sex education and abstinence training. Our youth are being bombarded with feelings from their own adolescent bodies, and we, their parents, schools, and communities, are providing them with Abstinence/Sex Education training, but there is something missing.  In our research, we have determined that our young people are not being given any of the tools on relationship development.

 We began to look at this problem and developed a program designed to give young people the tools to navigate through the early part of a relationship in a new way.  Instead of making decisions about sex as the first consideration, Discovery Dating's goal is to give young people guidance about the relationship issues and character issues of the other person (and themselves).

 Wise Women Gathering Place, through Discovery Dating, created a resource that young people can use right away to help them discern their partner's character qualities and behavior habits.  This is very helpful in assisting our young people with making more deliberate decisions about moving forward with each other in a relationship.

 Our young people need no longer be guided by their feelings alone, and they need no longer make the decision about whether or not to commit to Abstinence or carry condoms along, just in case.  They can now have the reassurance that it is not the right time to be thinking about sex because they have a lot of learning to do about the person to whom they are attracted, and now they will know how to do it!  Discovery Dating is a program that is the logical precursor to Abstinence/Sex education.

 The main idea behind Discovery Dating is to generate confident and inspired young people, skilled in healthy relationship development who know what they want in life and who can assert their own values successfully in all kinds of social situations.  Discovery Dating has other objectives as well: to reduce premature sexual activity; reduce unintended pregnancy; reduce sexually transmitted disease; reduce substance abuse, reduce other risk behaviors and the problems that result from impulsive choice-making.  The development of safe, healthy relationships will, by default, improve all of those outcomes.

 Discovery Dating facilitates the discovery of facts and information about behavior patterns and values of a person.  Participants will have fun as they learn how to define and determine the character issues of potential friends or partners (or even themselves).   

Discovery Dating demonstrates how to investigate and assess behavior patterns and other facts BEFORE risking too much involvement and being tied to a harmful relationship.  This process can help develop many different types of committed relationships more safely, such as marriage, business partnership, etc.

 The curriculum includes diary pages and a pyramid map to make notes about the different details which are "Discovered" during dates, or other encounters.  With practice the person can have a clear picture of how much he or she knows about the potential partner.  They can now make a more informed and reasoned decision about whether they should continue toward on eventual commitment with the person or not.  They no longer rely on "feelings" alone; they can decide based on some facts which they have discerned.

 An important emphasis in the program is the use of mentors.  There are opportunities to choose effective mentors and to have fun practicing the process with the mentors.  Ten script-dates are provided for practice, allowing mentor and mentee to use hypothetical situations (rendering the learning process non-threatening).  Students enjoy sharing these pretend situations with their mentors and quickly become very discriminating in their observations.  Over time, such practice will develop the young persons' ability to screen information about the people they choose to be their friends or mates with greater discrimination.  This will increase their ability to attain safe, pleasant and constructive relationships and feel good about their power to do so.   

Discovery Dating^© is a unique and exciting curriculum which can fill an overwhelming void in the education our youth and of America as a whole.  While our primary focus is for our own community to benefit from this curriculum, we believe that Discovery Dating has marketing potential to the general public's parents, educators and social services across the country as well.

 Discovery Dating^© * Wise Women Gathering Place * 2482 Babcock Rd * Green Bay, WI 54313 * 920-490-0627 * info at discoverydating.com