In this special episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour, Jake White shares major highlights, upcoming opportunities, new resources, and exciting updates from the Vive18 team.
From the success of the first Prevention Innovators Conference to youth leadership camps, professional training, bilingual prevention resources, and the launch of the Vive18 Prevention Arcade, this episode highlights the organization’s continued focus on making prevention education engaging, accessible, and impactful.
Jake also introduces new opportunities for prevention professionals, educators, and youth leaders to get involved with Vive18, including upcoming conferences, camps, podcast opportunities, training resources, and customizable prevention tools.
Key Takeaways
- Prevention can be engaging, fun, and interactive not scary or boring
- Youth-led initiatives create lasting impact and empower emerging leaders
- Community partnerships and professional development strengthen prevention efforts
- Technology and gamification make prevention education accessible to everyone
- Resources and training tools level the playing field for all prevention professionals
- Bilingual and culturally responsive prevention is essential
- Collaboration and innovation drive the future of prevention
Introduction and Conference Highlights
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake, and listen, I have to tell you something. I just recorded a complete episode and forgot to press record. So this is actually take two. If you notice me leaning back in my chair, this is why. So today’s episode is actually kind of special.
I love interviewing guests. That’s my favorite part of doing this because I get to learn so much and get inspired from all of you. Today, I’m going to give you highlights, invites, and updates from the Vive18 team. because it’s one of those things I don’t knew enough, do enough. And people I found out really want to know what’s going on so they can participate. And if that’s you, check out this episode. And by the end, I’m actually gonna give you a gift. We have been secretly developing this incredible tool for prevention, and we just unveiled it last week. And I’m gonna get it to all of you for free. And I can tell you you’re gonna wanna try this out. think about what would be like a really cool, really easy to implement way to introduce prevention and even substance specific information that’s if we’re honest, it’s like not the most fun thing to teach or to learn. And what if we can make that really fun to learn? And so I’m excited to share that with you. Stick around to the end of the episode. But let’s get started right away. We’re doing highlights, invites, and updates. Start with the highlights. So, highlights this year have definitely been, I mean, for me, like the biggest risk we took became the biggest highlight because honestly, everyone was super skeptical, rightfully so. this year was the first ever prevention innovators conference. Yeah. Some of you wild animals decided to hop onto a cruise ship with us and do a prevention conference. And it was awesome, man. Like it was such a good time. yeah, big shout out to the 35 of you who took a chance.
And made it such an incredible event. Big out shout out to Mitchell Moore for making sure we all got CEUs for all the training we did. and for Shavana Wilson. You and your team out in Bermuda were incredible. You showed us such a great time around the island, and just investing in prevention with us. And so, yeah, one of the sweet moments, everybody, was we got to actually meet the minister of safety and get to sign up proclamation with them about how incredible prevention is, how much it’s needed, and that we were gonna work together to invest in each other’s initiatives and growing the field. So that was that was such a sweet moment. and Mitch, you rocked that. it was it was so awesome. so what I’m gonna do because I don’t want to talk the whole time is I’m gonna play a couple videos for you during this episode.
And most of the video is actually sound bites anyway. So if you’re listening in your car, that’s totally cool. You’re still gonna get good things out of this episode. And if you want to come back later and watch on YouTube, you’ll get to see all the fun people and smiles and and stuff like that. But the highlights of the cruise, I’m just gonna cap this off. I won’t tell you everything. I’m gonna show you the video we made, and it’s gonna pretty well encapsulate.
The skeptical nature we all went into this with and the incredible, the I want to say the incredible natural high and the learning that happened and the connection that was next level. So check this out. We’ve got sharing this screen. So prevention crew prevention innovators conference dot com. We are gonna watch the video right now.
Yeah. I get so pumped watching that video. I don’t know if you’ve had this experience recently, but like the my gosh, I can’t believe this is my job. Like doing impactful, like very, very impactful work and getting to work with incredible humans who want to change the world. That experience just kind of was a mountaintop moment from I don’t know if this is gonna work to this is incredible. And this is what innovation feels like. Yes, there was skepticism. Yes, there was setbacks, a lot of them actually. But it was so great to push through and just know that, hey, this vision was here for a reason. And to have somebody like decades smarter than you, who almost speaks another language because they’re so smart, say, like this.
Is the best value I’ve gotten from a conference. And this is an incredible thing. I want to sign up next year and bring all my friends. Like they’re literally in charge of credentialing across the world, like international credentialing for our field. That was such a wild moment where I just had to say, I can’t believe I get to be around these people. it’s just a blessing to be a part of it. And and that’s that’s honestly been my posture around this cruise thing.
This Prevention Innovators Conference is that it’s a gift. I couldn’t have drawn this up or made it happen without the individual individuals here and honestly just praising God because it could have gone so much worse. So much worse. so that’s enough about the cruise. Once again, I just want to say a sincere thank you to Mitchell Moore, if you’re listening, and Shyvana Wilson. You two are incredible and year one.
The founding year was such a success because you were a part of it.
The Success of the Prevention Innovators Conference
The second thing that we’ll chat about, and you know what, we’re doing highlights and invites. So let’s just invite you right away. If you want to come next year, and that sounds fun, go to Prevention Innovators Conference.com. You can sign up. The dates are set in April. everything’s ready. You could literally book it right now. we are going from Miami.
To the Dominican Republic and back, of course. So if you’re wondering, can I use funding for this? Yes, we’ve taken care of everything. there’s there’s no risk. Vive 18 is gonna bill you for the whole experience. It’s all inclusive. And yes, you heard correctly. It is literally it’s like under what you’re used to paying for going to a prevention conference. we we had people give us their their research.
Showing what the prices were. So it’s very, very cool. The next thing, a big highlight of this year has been our camps. And the camps kind of just combine everything we’re about, which is educating students, showing them how fun prevention can be, and launching and training peer-led clubs. Everything we love doing and we know is really effective in our field, we’re just combining it over a three-day experience. And so
What started it with something last year just in Arizona has now been to Alaska and Arkansas too. and don’t ask me why it was all the states that start with A. We didn’t we didn’t like pull up an alphabetical list of the states and start there. It just worked out like that with our partners. So that has been really, really cool. And you know th there’s been something about
Something about the camps that I’ll never forget. And if you know me, I’m a very logical person. I’m not a very feeling person. even as a presenter, I’ve had to work on like how do I actually convey my feelings to people? Cause I’m I’m just logic and strategy and action. the feeling I want to have is joy. And so I play a lot of games and have fun and laugh with people. But one of the feelings I I won’t forget was at these camps and at our national conference, the students get to take the stage.
We’ve trained them up all weekend and now it’s their turn to share why they care about prevention and mental health. They share their story. They practice all the things they’re gonna bring back home to your community, so that they become a voice for change and advocacy. So they take the stage and it was I think the first time in years that I’ve like cried and it was happy cry. Like, I think I’m getting more sensitive.
As I age. So it’s like I am, I do feel things. And so it has been really, really fun to watch these camps, these conferences that youth are a part of and how much they’re growing. So I’m gonna show you some highlights from camp, which again it’s the same model as our national conference, but we actually do it at a campground so we can have zip lines and rock walls and giant swings and all this fun stuff, along with the education. Cause if we’re gonna if we’re gonna bring youth into this, we gotta make it fun and we gotta give them opportunities to lead. So here’s what that looked like. I will show you right here.
Showcasing the Prevention Arcade: Fun Learning Tools
All right, if you’re looking for it, you can actually go to vibe team.com slash events. And then the video is on our Arizona Youth Leadership Camp. we’re doing it with Arkansas soon as well, you can see. And so when you click on the event, you can sign up if you’re from that state, but here is the video.
Woof. There it is. Man, see, that’s another one. I just hits me in the feels because they’re they’re doing it. so the the updates are here, the highlights are here, but the invite is there too. So if you want to experience that, you can actually sign up for our national leadership conference. And your students will just be on a national level meeting each other from different states doing this work, highlighting themselves and the great work they’re doing, sharing ideas, and also just getting invested in. So they get to create PSAs and podcast style interviews with each other. So they learn behind the camera techniques and in front for public speaking. They also get to create a prevention project to bring back to your community. And this is so fun because the third thing is the Shark Tank competition. And this is like the real deal.
We’re giving out hundreds of dollars to your student clubs to bring back home. And that, man, they just get so excited and fired up about creating a change because they have an immediate stake in the game. And whether they win or lose, they’re ready to make a change back in your community because we’ve done some research and data collection from these events, and we found out even if they don’t feel like a leader or like their voice matters or like prevention is important at the start of the conference.
By the end, all that has changed. They are, they know that they are capable. They have skills to take back. They’ve already practiced all these skills. And so they’re really eager to make a difference. and best case scenario, they also have won some money and just had a great experience getting on stage, pitching their ideas, and they’re like, hey, we can do this back home. We got this. so you can sign up for the National Leadership Conference on our events page if you’d like to join us and this is actually one of our updates is this event page is new. So we’re going to continually update this. So if whether it’s you’re hosting an event with us, like the Arkansas camp or the Arizona camp, which is sponsored and free for people all over that state, you can actually have us do that with you. We’ll host the event with you and make it available to people.
So that’s just a big opportunity. And then you also have our national opportunities like the Prevention Innovators Conference for us Prevention Pros and the National Leadership Conference for your youth and you know your advisors.
Upcoming Prevention Events and Camps
Let’s see. The final highlight I’ll share is something I didn’t really it didn’t hit me until this year. It hit me this year. We’ve actually been training professionals in over six states that have just said, Hey, we like what you’re doing. Can you teach us? Which is wild to me. I I I don’t know if you relate with imposter syndrome or like why me? Am I qualified? But I mean, it’s very real for me too. I walk around with a ton of confidence, but at the same time, it’s like, wait, really? You want to learn from me? and so what’s been really cool is people have brought us in to train them on our our toolkit, our prevention toolkit with 18 activities to make prevention really fun. and it’s aligned with 90% of SEL competencies and 60% of the school counselor standards.
And so just an easy, fun way to bring prevention into the schools and to do it just like we do. so that’s been really fun getting to do that. But another thing is just like training people how to start peer led clubs and get students engaged in prevention to show them on first impression, hey, prevention’s incredible. I can make a difference in the world and I can do it. Because oftentimes we fail that first impression.
We make prevention sound scary, judgy, and boring. And if that’s the case, I mean, there’s no wonder students don’t resonate with it and they definitely don’t want to join our clubs. Like, why would they choose that? And so we’re making it really, really fun. And maybe that’s the secret, right? It’s like, all right, Jake, you’re not the most educated. You’re not a doctorate in this stuff. And there are people out there with those strengths. So I’m going to continue learning from them. But we’re just really good at engaging young people in this work.
And so that’s been the really cool opportunities. Big shout out to our partners in Texas and Vermont, South Carolina, Missouri, Washington, yeah, Arkansas. Y’all have been y’all have been amazing. And it’s been cool to see your, I guess, field members in prevention light up and get excited about prevention and just get excited about doing the work we’re doing when it can be really heavy sometimes. That’s been really cool as a highlight is those pro trainings. Now I’m done with the highlights. You got invited to the cruise, our national conference, the camps. but another invite is this. Y’all, the podcast. I this is such a a neat resource because I found out people actually listen. Like people are listening to this right now. You’re one of them.
Youth Leadership and Student Camps
And you’re not alone, people come up to me at conferences like, my gosh, I recognize your voice from down the hall. You interview people on the drug prevention power hour. And it’s so awesome. So if you want to get interviewed, it you don’t have to be a pro. Like actually, this is for prevention pros or educators. and what defines a pro is do you do this for a living? Is this your job, part-time or full-time? But I would say if you’re passionate about prevention.
And you have things to share and passions to share, I would love to interview you. there’s nothing better than sharing why we do this work so that we know we’re not alone. And then just sharing some successes and failures so we can all learn from each other. So yeah, if you want to be on a on this podcast, email me, jake at five18.com. And if you have students who are passionate about this work.
We want to interview them. And check this out. On our podcast page, if you scroll down right here, you can see our student intern Reagan from Kansas. She does student takeover episodes. So they literally they take over the entire thing. I am not there. They talk about prevention from a student lens. they share ideas, enthusiasm, encourage one another.
There’s some of my favorite episodes. And Reagan is just so funny and so cool. I love listening to her episodes. She just brings life to our to our podcast. So if you if you’re looking for some, just any of them that say student takeover, check those ones out. She crushes it. And I will actually donate fifty dollars to your student club for taking the time to share and be on the on the podcast.
Take advantage of that at vibe18.com/slash podcast. Now, another update that’s helpful for all of you is we now have apart from the events page, if you hover over our resources tab, we actually have a resources page now. So different programs that are really, really helpful for us, like know your neuro, which has free prevention videos on basically any high-risk behavior.
Training Professionals and Expanding Resources
That people will come across between the ages of zero and eighteen, it’s here. and this is by the author of Know Your Neuro and the NeuroWareabouts Guide, Dr. Crystal Collier. I’m like a fanboy of hers, so I love this resource. it’s right here. Just click, it’ll take you to the website. You can use all that. Other partners like Operation Parent, Mitchell, and Prevention Training Services, the Rotoract Interride.
Interact clubs, drug-free communities, playboard prevention games. this is weird. We’re on here too. all these are cool resources to check out. And so if you have any ideas for us, thing that should be added, send me an email. we’ll put it here. And we also now are going to keep this updated. So if there’s something you’re looking for, we want to point you in the right direction to know, hey, what’s out there and and who can I trust? So these are the ones that we recommend.
The other thing, ooh, this is new. The connection collection. People always ask me, like, how do I come up with games or like how do we make things fun or icebreakers? So we put together a collection of over a hundred games, activities, icebreakers, team builders, crafts, special events, group games, all of that into a little course for you. And so for less than 50 bucks.
Have this at your disposal. It even has an app that can be on your phone. So if you’re like at a meeting and you need something, or you’re going to a school and you realize, I don’t have something for engagement, just pop in there. You’ll see a video on how to do it, and then you can implement it right away. this is also great for student clubs and peer leaders because engagement and getting to know each other and those shared experiences should be a part of the prevention experience, right? Otherwise, we’re not going to connect.
Our clubs won’t grow, it’ll fall flat, our students will leave. So feel free to use that. It’s called the Connection Collection, and you can get there on our website through our courses page. and by the way, if you’re already part of our community and you get like you’re doing the monthly coaching calls with us, we have our club advisors course and everything like that, then this is just a free thing that’s available to you because you already do that.
So again, more info is on the course page. And that brings us to. I have all right, listen. I I teased this before, but I didn’t say it. The big tool that we’re unveiling is a Vive 18 prevention arcade. Yeah, you heard that right. An arcade, like think classic arcade games.
Introducing the Prevention Arcade and Bilingual Resources
But with prevention built in. Like the easiest way and honestly just a fun, simple way to bring prevention into any classroom, boom, is right there. And you better believe it’s coupled great with discussion questions and things like that. But it just is it was kind of built on the premise that if we could take the, I would say like the boring, or honestly, the the things that aren’t.
They aren’t fun to teach or to learn the specific data points, the substance-specific data. That’s like, did we really need a presentation for this? Like, that’s the most boring way to get this information audibly in front of someone or in a big group. What if we could bring that same information through a game and we are interacting with the information? And so, y’all, this is actually version one. I’m gonna give you free access to this. You’re gonna be able to test all the games.
You can share it with all the educator friends that you know. and I’m gonna share two of our updates and then I’m gonna show you that and give you access. So the last two updates is if you’ve been using our toolkit or you’ve wanted to, but we didn’t have it in Spanish, well, that’s solved now. Let us know if you need the Spanish versions. It is now, we are now bilingual. I guess you could say Vive 18. Let’s go we’re bilingual, we got the toolkit in Spanish. We’re super excited. can’t wait to roll that out with you. And we also have a bilingual presenter. spoiler, it’s not me. So if you’re wanting to couple the amazing Assembly experience to spark prevention in your community and also get the toolkit started, we have that option. So we’re just so pumped about that. and then the last one is you’ve been hearing me fanboy over Dr. Crystal Collier. And now she is a Vive 18 speaker and trainer. Woo! Y’all, I’m so excited. If you’ve seen her speak, you know why I’m so excited. No one makes prevention and learning about the brain this much fun. Like it doesn’t make sense. You leave and you can actually teach prevention in a fun way because you were around her. she’s incredible.
Partnering with Experts like Dr. Crystal Collier
She trains prevention pros, she trains prevent doctors and therapists because she is one. and it’s it’s really incredible. She literally wrote the book on high-risk behaviors for students and youth. And she it’s based on neurodevelopment. And she literally has scripts on what to say at what age. I remember having a conversation with her asking her about dopamine and then different high-risk behaviors. And she is l a walking encyclopedia herself, she is incredible to be trained by and she has a knack for making it fun to learn. So if you would like to book Dr. Crystal Collier for your team, you can do that at vive18.com/slash speakers. So, so excited for Dr. Crystal that we get to be partners with her and to share in the great work she’s doing. And y’all, that leaves us. If you want to try the prevention arcade.
Go to vive18arcade.com slash CADCA. Because we made a special page for all of you. We just unveiled it at CADCA one week ago. And it was incredible. So if you are at home, go there right now. And if you’re not at home and you want me to walk you through it while you’re listening into the in the car, check this out. We will we will do this. I’m gonna share the Vive 18 arcade right here. Boom, there it is. Pick your game. A growing arcade of skill-based prevention games right in your browser. No downloads. So the first game is called Skill Up. Let’s lock in and play this thing right now. All right. So when you go in, you’ll see the startup screen and you’re choosing your character. You can be an athlete, creator, builder, or connector.
I’m gonna be a connector. I like connecting people. Then the instructions are to bounce on the platforms to spring higher and climb as high as you can. Make sure you don’t hit any of the pills, says pills and fentanyl. A fake pill can hide a deadly dose. Each one steals a heart and slows you down. You want to grab the brain boosts because this gives you a burst of speed upward. Collect five to grow your frontal lobe.
The part of your brain for social skills, problem solving, and emotional regulation, and then skip the shortcuts. The yellow platforms collapse under you. Real skills take effort, no skipping. So if you’ve seen Vibe18 do our thing, you’ll know that developing skill sets instead of shortcuts is the language we use. It’s why educators love our program because they reinforce it in the classroom. So let’s play this game real quick. All right, boom. You see my character? I use the right and left arrows.
To move as we go. And then, no, I hit a pill. And it says mystery pill. A pill you didn’t get straight from the pharmacy could be counterfeit. Many fake pills contain a deadly dose of fentanyl. There is no safe, just this once. The effect is disoriented. So continue. remember we have three lives. So I did lose one of my lives in the game you can see when I hit the yellow platforms how they disappear after one bounce. Now I’m gonna try to get one of these brain boosts before losing another heart. Okay, I see one. Okay, I just missed the boom! Okay, I got the brain boost. It says healthy outlet. Sports, art, music, and fitness build discipline and community. These healthy outlets don’t just fill time, they rewire your reward system. Power up, speed boost. Okay, cool. So already.
We’re like 20 seconds in the into the game. We’ve already learned about fentanyl and how it could contain deadly doses and that it could be found in anything we get that’s not from the pharmacy. I’ve also learned about protective factor, right? Healthy outlets, they rewire our brain in a healthy way. And sports, art, music, and fitness, and community. So like this is really cool. I’ve I’ve been playing 20 seconds, I learned something.
As you go throughout this game, you go higher and higher. The brain boost you can see, it actually makes you bounce a little higher for a little bit. So you enjoy that perk. So I’m gonna go back to the arcade and show you the vibe. These first two are my personal favorites. So I’m gonna show you these two. And then you can play shortcuts versus skill sets, the runner game, which has more, I would say substance specific information on marijuana.
Alcohol, nicotine, and then the Vibe 18 squad, which is like refusal skills, decision making, things like that. but the vibe’s my favorite. So I’m gonna pop in there and remember vibe18arcade.com slash CADCA. You can play them right now. And then finally, I’ll leave you at the end a way you can get this to all your educators. So I’m gonna be the athlete for this one.
This one, this game’s cool because you actually integrate integrate your own hobby. So let’s say I’m into music. I’m a drummer, so I’m into music. You click the music as your hobby, and it says if you get your hobby, you get three times the score. So let’s go and see what that means. How to play. We collect coping skills. We avoid the pressures. we also want to collect our hobbies. And if you get through the three waves, you win the game.
So let’s go. We’re gonna play. All right, you can see. Uh-oh, there’s negative thoughts. it hit me. so it was chasing me. Some of these bad things that are in the game, like things you want to avoid, they chase you. It’s really fun. You kind of have to juke them left, right. There we go. so we’re avoiding the red ones. The green ones are positive things like focus. Boom. I got that. I got 14 points. Ooh, self love. All right, cool. I got that. Community.
All right, I definitely want community, music. There’s my hobby that showed up. That’s pretty cool. Breathe. All right, cool. Little coping strategy. So you can see how these are just little ways. Like we’re playing a game, but I’m reinforcing the fact that things like community, self-love, music, focus that are good for me. And then I get quiz questions. When you keep telling yourself you can’t do something, your brain starts to believe it and stops trying.
Gets motivated to prove you’re wrong, has no reaction, or helps you set new goals. FOMO can lead teens to, man, making choices they regret. So there’s little quiz questions that go throughout the game. So the learning outcomes are in the game and then kind of interrupted throughout it whenever we complete something or if we make a mistake. So what you’ll find as you play these games is they’re very encouraging.
if you’re playing the arcade and you read this whole page, we can actually tailor these games to you. If you’re someone who’s working with a grant or your local data is showing, hey, our students need to be educated on this, and this is what we’re focusing on. We can build it for you, with you. if you love it as it is, you can just license it, use it. But listen, I’m offering this for free and it’s gonna be up there for a while.
And so send it to as many people as you can. Enjoy this thing. And my goal is we’ll always have a free version, but we always want to be building this. And so I do need to invest in our team to continue building. It takes a lot of money to build stuff like this. Like you would not believe how expensive it is. But we we know you’re worth it. so we’ll always try to have a free version. and then if you want to tailor it, we can even make it part of your coalition. We can brand it for you.
So it builds awareness for your organization and students and faculty, they all sign into your platform. you’re getting data, all that good stuff we can work with you on. So try it out. Go to vibe18arcade.com slash CADCA. And y’all, that is this has been fun kind of updating you about everything. I I forget to do it often, y’all. So I’m glad that I had the reminder that we should be updating you guys on what’s going on.
Closing Remarks and Future Opportunities
And we’re just so excited about partnering with you and doing this work and making it fun. Again, I just kick myself that we get to do this for a living. So if you’re in the field, thank you for doing this. Thank you for listening to an episode. And please share this. If somebody who’s a prevention pro, they probably would love to hear about the Prevention Innovators Conference. if they’re a student or lead a student-led club, then they’ll probably want to hear about the Vive 18 National Conference and Camps.
We got the podcast invite. Please be on the podcast. We want to interview and learn from you. Y’all, I definitely do not know it all. So I love getting to interview about your passions or something that you just want to help spread and train others on. Bring it to us. We’d love to help spread it out to the world for you and with you. again, we got the toolkit in Spanish now, whoop whoop, as well as a bilingual presenter. And we got Dr. Crystal Collier on the team.
Our events and resources pages. my gosh, we are so blessed. Thank you for being partners with us. Thank you for listening in. And we can’t wait to see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.
Connect with Vive18
🌐 Website: https://vive18.com/
🎙️ Podcast: The Drug Prevention Power Hour
🎮 Prevention Arcade: https://vive18arcade.com/cadca
📅 Events & Opportunities: https://vive18.com/events
📚 Resources: https://vive18.com/resources
🎤 Podcast & Guest Opportunities: https://vive18.com/podcast
