When I look at our program today I am so excited to see all the milestones we have passed and all the change that happens on a day to day basis.
I started working for Step Up Now last March, sharing a cramped office and dreaming about our new office space that was being renovated. Now I sit in a spacious office, right next to a huge teen friendly center complete with it’s own soon to be coffee bar.
But more than the physical facility improvements, we have seen some exciting growth in the number of youth that we reach with our message of healthy relationship choices. The first year of our grant we presented to a total 990 youth and this year we are only 6 months into our grant year and so far we have presented to approximately 1,652 youth.
More and more schools are allowing us to come in and present to health classes and we have even branched out and done presentations in English classes including doing an Abstinence Debate with a senior debate class at North Pole High.
For the debate the teacher, Liz Coghill, gave her students two weeks to research their argument which was to be pro-sex before marriage, then I would come and argue the abstinence side. Just during the research time many students came to Ms. Coghill and asked if they could switch sides because it was difficult to find arguments that proved sex outside of marriage was healthy.
On the day of the debate, I was very nervous as I was going against an entire class. But thanks to my co-workers who helped me prepare by doing a mock debate with me, it went great. By the end of the class period the opposition was completely silent. One student even said “I can’t even make fun of you.” He told me that my argument completely changed his mind about sex before marriage and that he was going to get tested for STD’s. I saw him two weeks later in the hallway and when I asked him what he was doing, he put his fist in the air proudly displaying our bracelet and said “I’m being abstinent!”
Our mentoring program is also changing lives not only of all the junior high students we meet with in our after school programs, but of our peer mentors as well. One wonderful young lady we have as a volunteer told us that our program and what she has learned here has completely changed her life. She now urges her friends to change their own lives and frequently brings them to our center to have them learn all the skills and statistics that she has learned.
Everyday we see our impact on the youth we work with, and it truly is an incentive to keep moving forward.
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