Lincoln City, Oregon
My name Sarah Berman. We are in Newport, Oregon, which is part of Lincoln County, Oregon, where I grew up. And I do all kinds of things. Right now, I’m the grants activity coordinator for POTA. And one of our main goals with our biggest grants right now is doing drug and alcohol prevention, drug and alcohol abuse prevention with young folks.
And so right now I’m leading a group that we are calling, passionately calling HECK YEAH! And it stands for the Healthy Communities Youth Advocacy Group, HCYA. So way easier to call these kids, teens, the heck yeah. And we’re really kind of putting the ball in their court, letting them do the work and tell us, inform us on what we should be doing to make their community a healthier place. Today was really awesome.
We had Jake White, as you know, come and talk to our middle schoolers in Lincoln County. And today was actually the first time that we’ve had a middle school only event, mostly seventh and eighth graders.
In the past, we’ve had events with high school students, ninth through 12th grade, and some students in our area who are in like job core or just high school aged. So today was the first time we invited middle schoolers. So middle schoolers from all around Lincoln County came and they got together to do some activities, kind of met each other from different schools that they might not have met each other before, even though we are a smaller community. And they heard Jake’s story and they gave us a lot of awesome feedback about what they wanna see happen in their communities, what the things are that they need, what they want, and even some of the stuff that they’re struggling with that us grownups in the community could help with.
I already know that a ton of kids were inspired, so I hope to see a few more young leaders kind of shine through, middle schoolers who are like, hey, I think I can do this. I think I can throw a sober party, or maybe they reach out to us, or they reach out to some of the high school peers that they met today, the Heck Yeah! group. So yeah, I just hope that some inspiration leads to some actions in our community.
Vive 18 is awesome. It’s different than other drug prevention programs and other drug prevention like slogans or you know it’s definitely different from when I was a kid and everything was like just say no to drugs. Of course right yeah we should all say no to drugs but if it were that simple right the world would be in a totally different place than it is so Vive 18 does a really awesome job putting the message across that like we’re not here to stigmatize anybody who might use substances or try substances and that there’s better things to do. So was different to hear a bunch of middle schoolers be told, you know, some of the facts that we already know about the dangers and harms of drugs, which they already know that stuff too, but the real positive and different message was that not everyone’s doing that and you can still be cool and go to high school and have friends and go to college and have friends and not use substances.
I could tell them my first-hand experience watching all the middle schoolers today in this community, watching how engaged they were with it. They weren’t falling asleep, they weren’t talking over it, they weren’t trying to skip, you know, cut out. They were engaged, they were involved, and they gave us a lot of really good feedback. I don’t think you get that with other programs. You don’t get the feedback directly from middle schoolers what it is that they’re facing, what they want, what they need, how we can support them. getting that feedback from them is priceless.
Lincoln City, Oregon
My name is Jolene Misa-Weincoop. We are in Lincoln City, Oregon, and I work for the hospital system out here in rural Lincoln County and I oversee a federal grant program.
The vibe was so fun, so energetic. It was like getting to be back in high school, attending one of your school assemblies where everyone is just cheering and clapping and having a good time and just interacting with one another. It was so awesome to like see everybody chatting with each other and not being afraid to raise their hands and share information or ideas that they might have had. And yeah, overall it was just so energetic.
I would say that Vive18 is just so personal, like you have someone come in front of a large audience or maybe even it’s a smaller group setting, but you have someone who can just really speak from their heart, share their own personal testimonies or experiences with substance use. Maybe it was a family member that had experienced it they themselves, but it was nice just to hear those direct experiences of maybe what the speaker has gone through and then really taking that and relating it to the group of students, whether they’re middle school, high school. Any age college students. I think any student might be able to relate in one way or another just to the experiences that the speaker shares and that was one of the things I really enjoyed.
So one aspect of today was the students were able to break out into some smaller sessions and talk about some potential school projects that they might be able to implement at their own middle schools. And it was really great to kind of hear some of the ideas that they were coming up with in terms of how they were going to talk to their fellow peers about substance use prevention, or maybe they wanted to put on a parade or a walk, something to bring awareness about substance use and I’m really excited to see just over the next year how these projects come to fruition, see how they’re able to engage their fellow peers and kind of see what changes are made just in our own community based off of those projects.
I would tell them just to go for it. Just if they’re really looking for an organization that can come in and do something different to really engage students, to really get those students thinking and coming up with ideas and sharing, to definitely reach out to Vive 18 because Vive 18 just has so much energy. They really speak from the heart, from their own personal experiences as well. And I think they just do a great job at engaging youths general and young adults as well.
Newport, Oregon
Melaia Kilduff is the Executive Director of PAADA, the Partnership Against Alcohol & Drug Abuse. She brought Jake White from Vive18 to help with her youth substance use prevention efforts.
“PAADA puts on two youth leadership academies a year and we decided this spring it should be more like a celebration and talking about the things that kids can do to make self safe healthy choices. Jake came out and did a great presentation about safe sober parties, and getting together having fun without substances, and being a positive role model for younger kids as well as their peers. The kids responded so well they’re excited they want me to start planning parties for them hahaha. The energy this time (was great), last time kids came and we did workshop, workshop, workshop, and they learned about the dangers of drugs the neurological effects of drugs, how to communicate with peers and it was like going to school.
Today they came in and I watched their body language, just like “All right we’re here for this.” But this time music was playing and there was energy in the room and they were excited to be here, and then they found out “oh this isn’t like drugs are bad” it was “hey let’s do something else, there are options and you can do something better that’s going to be skill building instead of shortcuts!” The kids responded so well and they left energized and motivated to do better things going into the summer that’s an a fantastic feeling know that that they have that in their toolbox.
We had a state representative show up and he’s works with the education budget for our state and he was excited to see a bunch of kids in the room learning about leadership learning about positive safe choices um we also had one of our grant funders here and she was like “How do we get Jake back in Oregon how do we get him back in Lincoln County?” So we were already scheduled a couple more conversations about that. I’m excited to see how it grows.
I would recommend Vive18 to any rural high school. You don’t need a big high school to do this. We had 38 kids here today and those 38 kids are going to go back to each of their high schools and spread the message and spread the energy. This works for anybody you don’t have to be in a big school where everybody’s trying to do the same thing you can be the voice in the smaller community and make a change.”
