About The Passage Group
One Parent's Story
About 25 years ago, Bill Oliver walked his 15-year-old daughter up the lonely sidewalk of a drug treatment center in Florida. When he discovered that his oldest daughter had an addiction, there wasn't one juvenile drug treatment bed in his home town of Atlanta, Georgia. He never considered that his precious daughter, just fifteen, could be addicted to drugs. As he tells it, the world was just starting to realize that children could become addicts.
As Bill walked up that sidewalk with his daughter, he was struck with how alone they were. The school wasn't there. The church wasn't there. He and his family would face this battle alone. These were the first few steps in what would be a long journey to recover what was lost. That day he promised himself that if he ever got his daughter back he would help keep other parents from ending up in the same situation. What Bill learned from his experiences as a father and his years as the Executive Director for a drug treatment center was that the same principles that helped kids get off drugs and become responsible young people could be used to prevent them from ever getting addicted in the first place.
Bill wanted to teach parents the common sense principles he had learned the hard way. Out of this desire came a parent training program called The Parent to Parent Drug Prevention Workshop, designed to empower parents to keep their kids off drugs and alcohol. As the drug culture mutated to include premature, promiscuous sex and violence, Bill used the successful training model from the drug workshop and his experiences over the past 25 years to develop a program to help parents deal with the increasingly toxic culture. This latest program is called Parent to Parent, Lessons Learned.
The New Generation
Lou Colombo has recently joined the Passage Group team and is committed to networking the entire Parent-To-Parent Family through every modern resource available. With a very hands-on style, Lou is dedicated to keeping parents and professionals armed with the latest programs and information.
Lou offers a fathers point of view as podcast co-host of "Lets Talk Parent-To-Parent" with Bill. They discuss a multitude of parent topics on their broadcast. Lou brings a different kind of experience to the company as the voice of today's parenting generation and a father of three. If you want to hear Lou voice what parents are really thinking, but don't say, tune in. He's your voice.
As the new voice of The Passage Group, Lou has launched "Turn On The Lights" A National Parent Awareness Campaign. This new series of videos gives parents a looking glass directly into the toxic world our children are growing up in. Lou is actively speaking at conferences, schools, town hall meetings and other community events.
And finally, Lou has four special reasons why he is so passionate about his mission. Their names are Julie, Emily, Louis and Penelope and they are also Bill's daughter and grandchildren.
