Students Plan Prevention-Awareness Conference

DAYTON – Taking action and not just being a bystander to substance abuse in our communities has been a driving force among members of the Dayton Students Helping Each Other (SHEO) club.

These local teens set action goals each year, and attend conferences and trainings to learn how to advance prevention in Dayton – supported by the local Coalition for Youth and Families, prevention specialists with Blue Mountain Counseling, numerous grants and the help of members of the community, according to CYF program coordinator Peggy Gutierrez.

This month, Feb. 1-6, four local teens attended the Community Anti-drug Coalitions of America conference in Washington, D.C. And this Saturday, those teens and their peers will present the Southeast Washington Regional Action Conference at Walla Walla Community College, a major goal they had set themselves for the year, and will demonstrate to their peers from at least seven surrounding schools how to reduce substance abuse in their communities.

"Basically there are seven different strategies of prevention, according to the strategic prevention framework," said Dayton senior Carlos Oribio, a longtime member of SHEO and one of the students who attended the D.C. training.

"We learned (in D.C.) all about risk factors, community assessment, things like that," he said. "We got a cool little workbook that details a way to go through a logic model and we constantly refer to that when we're creating new projects. The training really showed us step-by-step what we have to go through when we implement a new project."

The students who attended the conference in D.C. learned how to identify a problem in their community, according to CYF member and Columbia County Prosecutor Rea Culwell, who attended the training with the students. "Our group identified underage tobacco use as one of the biggest problems right now," she said. "We talked about marijuana use and meth, but the students really felt that tobacco was the biggest health issue right now – especially with the unregulated use of e-cigarettes and tobacco products."

The strategic prevention framework helps students identify risk factors that lead to the problem; in others words, what local conditions underlie the underage tobacco use, and leads to the students creating an action plan.

"It was pretty intense," Culwell said. "They learned that you can't create a plan to change your community without realizing that it takes all types to make a community, and one plan won't fit all situations and every person."

Dayton eighth-grader Ashton Loper, also a member of SHEO, said the best part of the trip to D.C. was learning how to implement strategies in the community. "We learned lots of important things, like how other communities are struggling with what we're struggling with. We learned how to prevent and what to look for when we're preventing."

The students also had the opportunity to meet with U.S. Senator Parry Murray and Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Oribio was selected on behalf of Washington state to speak to Senator Murray.

"She really showed surprise at the marijuana products he described," Culwell said. "She'd never heard of 'Pot Tarts,' for example. They look just like a Pop Tart but are infused with pot. Overall, I think the legislators were really listening to the kids. It put a real life face on the problems facing our students."

Culwell expressed enthusiasm for the upcoming regional conference put on by local students. "It's a really courageous thing, getting up in front of their peers and teaching what they've learned. I really admire them for that."

Oribio and Loper will work with junior Emily Truean and sophomore Ally Chapman, who also attended the D.C. conference, to teach their peers about the strategic prevention framework. The regional conference theme is "Do Your Part-aay." Gutierrez explained that the urban dictionary definition of a "party" is people gathering together to socialize and drink alcohol. This gathering, she said, will be youth coming together to socialize and NOT drink alcohol.

The members of SHEO have been planning this conference since August, she said. They expect 50-55 students from surrounding communities to attend. And Oribio, Loper, Truean and Chapman may be selected to present their framework teaching at a state-wide conference in the spring, Gutierrez said.