The Van Buren County SAFE Coalition held
their annual youth training this fall for all members involved in Youth
Leadership Council in Van Buren County. This event, held on Wednesday October 1st,
was intended to help students gain a better understanding of what it means to
be a leader and it did just that!
There were 100 youth from the Van Buren
and Harmony School District, the students grades ranged from 7th-12th
grade. Some of these students have been a part of YLC for multiple years and
some were brand new this year.
Throughout the day students attended
four different workshops; Leadership, Art, Planning and ISTEP. The Leadership
workshop provided the students with an opportunity to get to know one another a
little better, to participate in some team building activities and to have fun
while learning the art of leadership. In the Art workshop students were asked
some very probing questions about their involvement with Youth Leadership
Council and what keeps them above the influence. They were then charged with
designing a poster that details these things in their own creative art work.
The students were able to use paint, markers, glitter, and foam letters and
shapes to make their posters unique. Winners were selected based on the
criteria of originality, creativity, best use of the page and best display of
their reasons. The first place winners were; Morgan Croft, Victoria Halverson,
Hannah Hunt, Kameron Gearhart and Lacey Smith. The students also learned about
state-wide prevention efforts when they attended the ISTEP workshop. Robbyn
Graves from Iowa Department of Public health spoke to them about the statewide
initiative and how they could get involved as well as street marketing
activities that they could do in their own community. Their final workshop was
planning, this provided them with an opportunity to take a look at the events
that are occurring throughout the year and determine the activities and
strategies that they want to implement to make a change in their community. All
groups came up with some great ideas and will begin implementing them right
away in October for Prevention Month and Red Ribbon Week- be watching for these
in the school and community.
This event is a lot of fun for the
students each year and provides them with some valuable
learning opportunities. They are able to learn public speaking skills,
leadership skills, planning skills and how to make a change in their community
based on the problems that they have identified! YLC members will be active all
year in hopes to spread the word about the dangers of drugs, alcohol and
tobacco as well as a few new initiatives they are going to embark on this
year…… be watching…… more to come!
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