Photos and Commentary from the Youth and Young Adult Conference at Callaway Gardens On October 15th and 16th, more than 500 students from local high schools and colleges gathered at Georgia’s Callaway Gardens to learn how to work with their peers to save lives on our highways. The two-day Youth and Young Adult Highway Safety Conference hosted by the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) helped this group of student-advocates focus on new ways to communicate life-saving ideas to their fellow students in Georgia schools. GOHS launched the safety conference concept here last year as a collaborative effort between students from sixty Georgia high schools and twenty-eight Georgia Colleges. “We provide the motivational speakers and an exceptional learning environment,” says Director Bob Dallas of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety. “Then these remarkable student highway safety advocates develop creative new ways to help influence their peers away from life-threatening decisions. It’s called peer education and it works.” The high school groups are called SADD, a name that means “Students Against Destructive Decisions”. At the university level, student chapters of the peer education programs continue to carry-on the lifesaving work. “We want these student chapters to discover how many innovative ways there are to raise awareness about the harm that can result from impaired driving and drug and alcohol abuse,” said Director Dallas. Every year the Youth and Young Adult Highway Safety Conference is designed to help Georgia’s student safety advocates to focus on the consequences of poor decisions that young adults make without regard to the long-term impact on their lives. “We get them talking about major decisions like DUI & drug use, as well as simple things, like failure to use safety belts. These can all result in unnecessary injury crashes and deaths,” said Director Dallas. This year’s conference was geared to expose Georgia students to the new ideas currently working well in other school systems and to make the young safety activists better peer educators. Says GOHS Director Dallas, “The concept is this.. if you want to effect changes in youth behavior, then you must pursue those changes through their own peer group. Our goal at GOHS is to have these highway safety advocacy and peer education programs available in every Georgia public high school and university.” To encourage Georgia’s young safety advocates to excel, GOHS lined-up many local and nationally recognized motivational speakers for the conference: • Chad Foster is one of America’s most sought after inspirational youth speakers. He encourages young people to believe in themselves and to become a positive force in their world. He reaches thousands of students and educators each year through his presentations, videos and books. His “Teenagers Preparing for The Real World” is a national best seller. • RJ Jackson has been called a merchant of hope for women and teen girls. This national motivational speaker showed young safety advocates the principles of leadership, purpose, passion and vision. Undeterred by a rare eye disease, RJ is famous for her real-life stories of courage and determination to overcome adversity. Her attitude is uplifting, her positive outlook is infectious. She is co-author of “Conversations on Success.” • Paige Galt
is Mrs. Georgia International 2005 and a volunteer with Buckle Up America.
At the age of sixteen, she nearly died in a horrific car crash because
she wasn’t wearing her safety belt. After years in rehabilitation
as a child and now a middle school Spanish teacher, Paige Galt is now
promoting seat belts in Spanish speaking communities and schools. • At the age of 14, Tim Roberts followed in his father’s law enforcement footsteps, beginning as a Police Explorer. With 16 years of service as a former deputy, detention officer, DUI Task Force officer and accident investigator, Tim initiated the first National Junior Police Academy in Georgia. Now he teaches leadership to young adults. • Bill Richardson is a retired Gwinnett County Police Officer, author, and Founder of the “It Won’t Happen To Me” non-profit teen driving safety organization. Inspired by a visit from a local high school student who had lost three friends in fatal traffic crashes, Richardson wrote his book titled, “It Won’t Happen To Me” in 1999 to educate teens and parents about the inexperience and unsafe driving habits of young drivers that lead to tragedy. • Carleen Brown is executive Producer and Host of the ATL Insider, the Emmy-Award winning public affairs program broadcast on Atlanta’s WB. The weekly 30-minute talk show “edu-tains” young adults about current issues and recently explored the topic of Teen Driver Safety with guests from GOHS, GTIPI, the Benjamin Banneker High School Chapter of SADD, and the Joshua Brown Foundation (Joshua’s Law). The 2005 Youth and Young Adult Safety Conference also includes first -person dialogues with three young people who will share their personal encounters with DUI tragedy: • As a young drunk driver, Chris Sandy was convicted of killing an elderly couple in a DUI vehicular homicide and has currently served four of his thirteen-year prison sentence. • Jonathan Bryant was drunk behind the wheel when he killed his best friend who made the fatal mistake of riding with him. Now Jonathan has to make 240 speeches like this one while serving out his ten years of probation. • Trevor Ramos,
lived the promising life of college student and athlete until he also
made the mistake of climbing into a car with his best friend driving
drunk. Trevor, who now knows what it’s like to survive severe
burns and a coma, calls his presentation, “When It Counts Most,
Will Your Friends Watch Your Back?” Below are some of
the photos from the Youth and Young Adult Conference. Click on each
photo for a larger image. |
