|
By Shreya
In my school, vaping is a huge problem. When I was nearing the end of my elementary school years, some middle school friends would tell me stories about kids huddled up in the big stall of the bathroom, taking turns vaping. When I heard those stories, I thought of them as uncommon scenarios that my friends happened to see. But now that I am a seventh grader, I see the horrifying truth of how common and easy it is for middle school students to get vapes. It's even worse when someone you know tells you they are vaping. Getting caught vaping is a suspendable offense at best; at worst, you could be expelled. What are you supposed to do about it? Tell the teacher that one of your friends is vaping and maybe get them expelled and ruin their life? Or perhaps you could gently try to fix the problem yourself, but what if something goes wrong and you lose a friend because they don’t get why you are trying to tell them what to do, and they still continue vaping? But if you don’t do anything about it and something goes wrong in your friend's life, wouldn't that guilty feeling eat you up inside? When I saw the advertisement for Teens For Tomorrow (TFT), a drug and substance use prevention program in Clark County, on my school's bulletin board, I knew I had to join. Being part of TFT has shown me vaping isn’t just a problem in my school; it's a problem for the whole county, as shown in this article https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/nov/02/. Yes, this article shows that the use of vapes and e-cigarettes has dropped among high schoolers. Still, it also states that the use for middle schoolers has stayed the same, which means in the future, if these middle school students don’t stop vaping, they are going to show the incoming sixth graders that it's ok to vape, and soon vaping will rise again unless we stop the issue. I aim to reduce this issue significantly in my community by starting clubs in schools tackling this issue and giving brief lessons to classes explaining the effects. Other organizations like TFT could lead these clubs until they are self-sufficient. I also think it would be beneficial to start educating kids as young as fourth grade about the effects of vaping so that when they come to middle school, they don’t fall into peer pressure and vape without knowing the side effects. Awareness is a big part of vape prevention. If kids aren’t aware of the consequences, there’s no way to stop them from vaping. The middle or high schoolers in this school could take field trips to elementary schools in their district and talk about the consequences of vaping. I will try to do my best through TFT to further this cause.
  The Idea Behind the Workshop
Hey everyone! My name is Kianne, and I am a member of Clark County TFT. In TFT, we encourage all members to take part in facilitating or even creating their own workshops to share with others. During our annual fall training I was given the opportunity to create and facilitate this very workshop to my fellow TFT members. Having just completed my first year as a member, I was beyond excited to be given such an opportunity. I revisited my past year in the program and thought about the valuable lessons I had learned and found that the one that stood out the most was about vulnerability. Although we had never had a workshop specifically designed to address vulnerability, the culture and environment we had created amongst each other proved that our vulnerability had a great strength to it, even if we had not known it yet. After I came to this realization, I knew that vulnerability would be the perfect workshop to create and share. Now, I would love to share this with all of you and I hope you are able to implement and adapt it to fit into your own programs!  By: Kianne (4 year TFT member)
Before my very first day of training with Clark County TFT Peer Education Program, I had never been a part of prevention before. I had never been in a setting where youth and adults were as passionate as they were about what they did (prevention). I didn’t know it included thousands of people from all across Washington State. Eventually, I learned what prevention is… and it is an abundant community of wonderful people. The purpose and goal of each individual is united by this idea of prevention, which is educating others on healthy coping skills, habits, and mindfulness in hopes of creating good habits for the future. Just learning about all of the wonderful opportunities I would have a chance to take part in while being a part of TFT is when I knew I wanted to be a part of prevention and that I wanted it to be a part of my future. Learning to Want Change and to A.S.A.P.: Always Strive and Prosper - A 17 year old’s Memoir6/1/2020
|
||||||||||
Our missionWe work to learn about substance use prevention among ourselves and other youth by:
|
Our visionThe youth in Clark County are empowered to:
|