Photos and Commentary from the October 28th and 29th Youth and Young Adult
Conference at Lake Lanier Islands
Getting Through to Young Adults At Risk
On the weekend of October 28th and 29th, more than 500 students from local high schools and colleges gathered at Georgia’s Lake Lanier Islands to learn how to work with their peers to become more educated on issues dealing with highway safety and to develop skills essential for leadership within their schools.
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 annual youth safety conference concept three years ago as a collaborative effort between students from thirty Georgia high schools and fourteen Georgia Colleges. This year, the number of participating high school chapters has more than doubled to sixty-eight and students from 23 colleges will be in attendance.
“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”. SADD was founded on the philosophy that young people who are empowered to help each other can become the most effective force in prevention. Originally SADD’s mission was to help these young people say “No” to drinking and driving. Today, the focus of that mission has shifted to include other destructive decisions in the complex world of teenagers where substance abuse, violence, and suicide are also threats to teen well-being.
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 GOHS Director Dallas. The slogan for this year’s conference was “Mission Saving Lives, Training Leaders For The Future.”
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.
The conference is 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 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:
• Fred Stokes travels the country empowering and motivating change at schools, corporations, and churches. From his autobiography, "The Bridge that Brought Me Over" Fred tells that coming from a rural area, while others struggled with peer pressure, drugs and alcohol, and a lack of guidance, he found his focus in basketball, football and track. In 1982, he won a full scholarship to play with the Georgia Southern Eagles. During his professional football career he played with the Los Angeles Rams, the Washington Redskins, and the New Orleans Saints. He received the much coveted Super Bowl ring in the Redskins victory over the Buffalo Bills in the 1992 SuperBowl. Fred retired from the league in 1997 to pursue what he views as his purpose - using his life experiences on and off the field to motivate a change to excellence across the nation.
• Randy Haveson has a soft spot for young adults and a gift for reaching them. Since 1986, Randy has impacted the lives of young adults nationwide. As a therapist, he has worked with high school and college students on issues ranging from substance abuse to depression and self-image. As a professional speaker with an M.A. in Counseling, Randy listens before he speaks. Young adults respond to Randy’s energy, honesty, and ability to transform oversized issues into manageable pieces through stories they can relate to. He makes the scary topics safe to talk about and he draws from his varied life experiences – drummer, pizza delivery guy, and t-shirt printer – to find common ground in real time to reach his audience. His comprehensive programs have received national recognition for their effectiveness and innovation.
• 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 has 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).
• Ivelisse Méndez, MSW, is a program specialist for Gwinnett United in Drug Education, Inc. (GUIDE), a substance abuse prevention agency in Lawrenceville, GA. She coordinates an alcohol and tobacco prevention program, Family Matters and assists with the GEAR Coalition's Youth Advisory Board. Ivelisse is committed to serving youth in the community and believes that media literacy is an important skill that all youth must have.
• Millie Linville is the GEAR Coalition coordinator at GUIDE, Inc. She has been the coordinator since 2004 and is concerned with underage substance abuse in the community. She is the environmental prevention specialist for GUIDE, Inc., and works to change attitudes about underage drinking in Gwinnett County and metro Atlanta. She has presented workshops on media literacy at youth and adult leadership conferences and has an interest in promoting critical thinking about the media.
• Angela D. Lewis, known to family and child-hood friends as CheeChee, is a full-time Account Manager for a Fortune 500 Company, President of Speaking Concepts & Publications, LLC, and a contributing columnist for the Wyngate Gazette’s monthly newsletter. She has a B.S. Degree in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina and is currently pursuing her Executive MBA from the University of Phoenix. In Angela’s second book, she is part of an anthology entitled, The Midnight Clear. This book consists of 21 short stories written by various authors about love, hope and inspiration.
• Lt. Chico V. Scott, Sr., Retired Deputy Sheriff, teaching “The Key To Your Personal Safety” curriculum. Former Coordinator with 23 years of experience in Patrol, Corrections, Crime Prevention, Junior Deputy and Defensive Driving Programs for the Bibb County Sheriff's Department. Developed and coordinated training programs for staff and law enforcement personnel in the teaching of Crime Prevention techniques, personal safety procedures, drug intervention and the importance of building good character, effective leadership and team concepts for Bibb County Public and Private School sixth grade students.
The 2006 Youth and Young Adult Safety Conference also included an encore viewing of the HBO special, “Smashed: A Toxic Tale of Teens and Alcohol.” The film is a very strong, realistic view of what actually happens to a person involved in an alcohol-involved crash. It follows several teenagers through the emergency room and through the medical procedures and long recuperation that follows.
As part of the this program GOHS presented a first-person dialogue with Warren McKeldin, one of the teenagers who became a focus of the film. Warren lived the promising life of an active student until he made the mistake of climbing into a car with a drunk driver. He suffered traumatic brain injury as a result of the crash. Now Warren goes around speaking to youth groups with this message: “Listen up. You never think it could happen to you. If you think you need to drink to have fun, you’re wrong. I know that there must be some reason why God saved my life. Whatever you have to do to stop drinking, do it.“
Independent studies have shown that students in schools with an established SADD chapter are more informed about the risks of underage drinking, other drug use and impaired driving. Students in schools with a SADD chapter are also more likely to hold positive attitudes reflecting reasons not use to alcohol.
“..It is the goal of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety that upon leaving the Annual GOHS Youth and Young Adult Safety Conference, every participant will have the skills to become a true leader, the confidence to stand alone, the knowledge to make the right decisions and the compassion to listen to others..”
SPECIAL THANKS GOES OUT TO BARBARA JONES, BROOK SNODDY, AND ALL THE VOLUNTEERS AND SPONSORS FOR THIS YEAR'S EVENT.....
