Contributed by Michael Carson
For their future, we need to provide youth safe places and promote healthy lifestyles for them. Safe places will build trust to share strong emotional feelings and deal with stress. In short, skill building to cope with the everyday challenges they face, and there are many.43% of high school students report feeling sad and hopeless for two weeks straight.
In those safe places, healthy lifestyles can be discussed to assist youth in making positive choices to become resilient and shape the quality of their lives. And youth drug prevention and education is vital to support overall health, academic success and, most importantly, lower the long-term risk of addiction. We know delaying drug use reduces the chance of addiction later in life. And many adults dealing with substance use disorders started in adolescence.
MyHouse and the Mat-Su Youth Task Force are hosting a “Youth Summit” October 9, from 9am–4pm at the Glenn Massay Theater, adjacent to Mat-Su College. Community youth providers and vendors will set up at 8am and be available during lunch and until 5pm. Box lunches will be offered during an hour-and-a-half lunch, and/or folks can decide to go out.
The AM session will set the stage with the history and phases of the opioid epidemic and how we got here with speakers.
The PM sessions will highlight social media addiction, a youth panel and close with Red Ribbon Week activities, October 23–31.
The theme this year is: Make a Difference. Be a Hero. Stay Drug Free. The stated outcome of the summit will be asking you to advocate and support youth drug prevention/education with phone calls and letters to state legislators, the AK Department of Education and local school boards.
I strongly believe we can come together as parents, school districts, communities and the state to keep our youth safe, healthy and thriving!
Event Info: Youth Summit; October 9, 9am–4pm; Glenn Massay Theater, adjacent to Mat-Su College; community youth providers and vendors set up at 8am and are available during lunch and until 5pm.
