By Noelle Bencie, Healthy Teens Young Adult Leader and Social Media Coordinator
As back-to-school season is upon us, Healthy Teens recognizes the outstanding work of our Teen Health Educators and congratulates them on completing another successful summer of peer education for youth in our community.
Throughout the summer, our incredible team of Teen Health Educators and Young Adult Leaders traveled to various locations across the community in order to teach youth about topics such as mental health, bullying, peer pressure and substance abuse. These in-person conversations allow the students in the Teen Health Educator program to have a lasting impact on their peers in the community.
Every peer education session ended with two questions the participating youth were asked to answer: “what stuck with you as a result of this session?” and “what are you going to change about your life as a result?”. Through this, we were able to find out what was really working about our sessions (in terms of the content that influenced them the most) and also be really focused on our mission, which is to bring about real, positive, lasting changes in the lives of these young people. We now have an incredible amount of data to share with our community partners, to help them as they continue to work with these youth after the end of the summer presentations.
Healthy Teens would like to take a moment to thank all of our amazing community partners, generous hosts that allowed us to reach hundreds of youth in our community. The Teen Health Educator program would not be possible without the support of these partners and we would like to thank all of them for providing a welcoming space to talk out important topics: DeSoto Boys & Girls Club, Palmetto Boys & Girls Club, Family Resources SafePlace2B youth shelter, Educational Consultants Consortium, Safe Children Coalition, and AMI Kids Manatee. We look forward to continuing to develop our work at these locations, as well as expanding our program throughout the school year.
The summer is the busiest time of year for Healthy Teens, and our amazing group of Teen Health Educators did a phenomenal job at serving our community to the best of their ability!
If you are interested in becoming a Teen Health Educator, Healthy Teens is still accepting applications until August 31.
The application form can be found here.
