It's All About YOUth

It's All About YOUth
By Troy Howard Middle School Students
Citizen
Thursday, November 10, 2004

Belfast - On Thursday, Nov. 4th, Leana Berry, Allie Carpenter, Sarah Daggett, Gary Desaults, Ashton Fancy, Janet Mathieson, Morgan McKinney, Winston Poole, Carlee Roebke, Matt Steinort, Kat Whitney, Jenna Zeilor, and our two chaperones, Adrianne Dickson and Amy Tice, all left Belfast for two days in Bar Harbor at the Maine Youth Action Network Peer Leadership Conference.

There were people there from all over the state - around 450 teen and chaperones. The workshops covered topics related to teen, such as drug and tobacco education, the importance of healthy eating and physical activity, and more. Gov. John Baldacci was a guest speaker.

We enjoyed learning new things and meetingnew people. Winston enjoyed the yoga class, and Jenna liked the workshop "Open Space," which was an interactive discussion on themes and issues chosen by the youth in the workshop. Gary liked seeing old friends that had met last year, and Matt liked making new friends.

We learned that it's OK to be yourself. It's OK that you don't smoke pot, drink or smoke in general. Ninety-two percent ofkids think it is not cool to smoke or drink. That's great! Now it is our job to be the leaders abd teach the other 8 percent how to be cool, by not smoking or drinking. We also learned that it is wonderful to be a leader. It feelsgreat to be a role model, to be someone who can make a difference in the world! To be someone who can save a person's life by teaching them how bad tobacco is.

We plan to use what we learned at the Peer Leadership Conference and complete some projects this year. We plan to try to prevent people from smoking in the Belfast City Park. We want to go to the Mayor and discuss our ideas for pursuing our plan. We will take more workshops to give us more ideas. We hope to gain facts and knowledge along the way to make our presentation more persuasive.

The Waldo County Y's Youth Advocacy Program is made possible by funding from Healthy Maine Partnerships. The Healthy Living Project, a hospital, school and community partnership, is one of 31 Healthy Maine Partnerships funded with tobacco settlement funds through the Partnership for a Tobacco Free Maine.

Waldo County General Hospital is the local lead agency. SAD3 is the local lead school district and SAD34 and 56 are participating school districts.