By Brooke Reynolds
When kids make unhealthy choices, like drinking underage, the reason they often give is boredom. “There was nothing else to do, I was bored.” For the past three years Alaska Island Community Services collected data to determine the most urgent community prevention needs in Wrangell. Overwhelmingly, the response from interviews as well as our research indicated that underage drinking is the area of greatest concern in our community.
On Thursday February 23, 2012 Alaska Island Community Services staff met with middle and high school students for the first meeting of the after school group “This Is Not Boring.” This Is Not Boring is a program meant to engage middle and high school students in performing and visual arts activities to help them develop alcohol resistance skills while developing and strengthening positive peer relationships. During the inaugural meeting many snacks were eaten and several potential logos for the group were designed.
Over the next nine Thursdays program staff hope to work with these Wrangell youth, and any other middle and high school students who may be interested, on a range of youth directed projects around the theme of This Is Not Boring. Some ideas students have proposed include; writing and filming skits about people doing fun and interesting non-boring things, designing posters of not boring things to do, and taking pictures of not boring activities that students can and do get involved in.
The final piece of the project will be to create a “This is not Boring” Facebook page. The student’s visual arts products will be posted and shared. Students will post videos and pictures made during meetings. In addition the students will take their activities into the community. For example, after March 15 the students are scheduled, together with program staff, to go out into the community to spray chalk “THIS IS NOT BORING” around the community for a video project. Our hope is that by bringing these messages into the community we can build a youth-driven message that there are a wealth of “not boring activities” for kids in Wrangell.
So, if over the next several months you see “This is Not Boring” messages springing up around town or if over the next couple weeks you see the slogan This Is Not Boring spray chalked around town DO NOT BE ALARMED. This is not youth rebellion, nor is it vandalism; it’s the positive and creative expression of our youth changing the way we deal with underage drinking in Wrangell.
If you know any youth who may be interested in this program, or have any questions about This Is Not Boring, contact Brooke Reynolds (brooke.reynolds@akics.org) or Desiré Shepler (desire.shepler@akics.org) at 874-2373.
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