Hi, my name is Brela and I go to Dodson High School in Louisiana. I’m in 10th grade, and I’ve been a Next Era member this whole school year. As a Next Era activist for Healthier Air For All, I have led some events and have also received extra training to conduct presentations with community partners.
The Healthier Air For All campaign is important to me because of how smoke can affect everyone. Personally, my mom and brother both smoke in the house and it causes me shortness of breath and makes it hard to breathe sometimes. I’m trying to make indoor places smoke-free because no one should have to breathe in secondhand smoke – I don’t like how it affects my friends, family, and community because everyone can get cancer from it.
I think youth activism is important because youth can make important changes by interacting with people, speaking out, and helping people when we can by getting them involved with the campaign. When I work Healthier Air For All events, some people don’t know that smoking is damaging them. This is why I’m trying to be a leader and tell people about it so hopefully they will stop and get the idea that it isn’t good for them. My plan to continue working for the Healthier Air For All Campaign is to encourage people to tell their story and tell them they don’t have to be afraid to speak up.
Hello, my name is A’Leaya and I am a sophomore at Tucumcari High School. I am a member of Evolvement and have participated in several events in my school and community.
On March 21, I participated in Kick Butts Day, a national day of action, by hosting a 24/7 campaign event. It felt great being a part of such an important day that joined youth all over the country in the fight against big tobacco. For our event, other Evolvers and I set up an interactive booth at Tucumcari Middle School where we informed our younger peers about the 24/7 NM campaign, which ensures that all schools in New Mexico are truly tobacco-free.
At the table, we collected over 130 assessments, which asked questions about tobacco use and policies at the school. Then they had the option to vote on different tactics their school could use to strengthen their tobacco-free school environment. With their vote, they entered a drawing to win a 24/7 campaign water bottle. The middle schoolers really absorbed a lot of the information we gave them about having a tobacco-free school environment.
It is extremely important for youth to get involved and attend events because it shows our peers how important tobacco control is and how it improves our future, because tobacco also affects the world we will live in as adults. Evolvement has educated me on this issue and so much more. I am excited to see what changes will happen and continue to work towards a healthier future.
Hi! My name is Alex B. and I am a junior at Christiansburg High School in Christiansburg, VA. I’ve been an activist for Y Street for two years now and it has been amazing. It’s been inspiring to watch as students speak up about improvements they want in their school and how Y Street helps to make them happen.
This year, I had the opportunity to be a part of Y Street’s “Healthy Hearts Carnation Gram” at my high school held the week before Valentine’s Day. It was really simple. Anyone who filled out a survey got to send a carnation with a personalized note to someone in the school. We started by going table to table asking if students wanted to fill out the surveys. Most students were hesitant about participating as they assumed they would have to pay to send the carnation (as that has been the case with other Valentine’s Day events in the past). But once students heard that it was free, word spread fast. Within the first two lunches, there were already close to 100 surveys filled out! The next day the table was swarming with students wanting to fill out surveys and be a part of the event.
The Carnation Gram was a huge success at my school and I’m hoping to continue it again next year. However, this campaign did so much more than just give students the opportunity to send each other flowers; many students began asking what Y Street was and how they could get involved! One day we had visitors from a neighboring high school asking how they could get Y Street at their school. This project was great because it was a chance for students to see all the different events you could participate in as a Y-Ster!
Hi, my name is Nazifa and I am a junior at JR Tucker High School in Henrico, Virginia. This is my first year in Y Street and it has been a fun learning experience. I have gained experience communicating with people and answering questions from all different types of people. I have learned that our school takes great pride in being tobacco-free.
On February 14 my school celebrated Tobacco-Free Spirit Day. We helped to promote the 24/7 campaign and I really enjoyed it. I’m very proud that our school stands behind such a great and powerful message and is dedicated to making our school 100% tobacco-free.
I had the opportunity to lead the day as a Tobacco-Free Spirit Day Captain. With the help of my fellow Y-Sters, we set up a table outside of our cafeteria and made sure everything was neat and organized, which was fun.
I liked the whole pre-event process. My YFO, Janice, had been very helpful in communicating with me and helping me get everything needed for the event set up along with Mrs. Johnson, our advisor, who helped us by providing us with extra materials. My friend Mikhayla, who is another Y-Ster, also helped set up the event. We had a lot of fun decorating the table and taking photos with other Y-Sters who helped, like Caleb and Hunter.
Interacting at the event was really fun. My school is one of the most diverse schools in our county, so there are lots of different people with unique views and opinions. I liked talking with my peers about our campaign and our youth group, which is working hard to keep our school 100% tobacco-free.
One conversation I had was with my friend Meron. We started talking because she was interested at first sight. She filled out a survey and we talked about how us Y-Sters are trying to promote our 24/7 campaign and working to make our school 100% tobacco-free. She was so inspired that she actually started helping us recruit people. She was sad that she hadn’t applied to Y Street because it looked like a fun and powerful thing to do.
I loved seeing students at our school get excited about taking pictures and winning prizes. We had lots of success filling out surveys and people were eager to do it. I was surprised that students weren’t the only ones getting involved, but teachers and even the principal. It made me happy that people were proud of our school being a 100% tobacco-free environment, and I think all together we can help other schools be 100% tobacco-free too. One of the best things about Tobacco-Free Spirit Day was that by the end, my friends were interested in joining Y Street because they saw the great impact we had created. We want to make Virginia a healthier and better place to live in. I hope to create a chain reaction that starts with me affecting someone else. Y Street has affected me and I hope to spread awareness.
My name is Abigail and I am a junior at Los Lunas High School in Los Lunas, NM. This is my first year in Evolvement and I have already had some incredible opportunities to engage peers in my school and members of the community by conducting events and legislator meetings.
On January 31, 2018, ten Evolvers had the opportunity to attend the New Mexico Allied Council on Tobacco (NMACT) Day at the Capitol in Santa Fe, NM. I, along with Jaeann Gonzales, began the day by speaking at a press conference about the work Evolvement is doing with both the 24/7 and No Minor Sale campaigns. The 24/7 campaign helps New Mexico schools be TRULY tobacco-free, which means that no matter the time of day, absolutely no tobacco products are used at any school-sponsored event by anyone. The No Minor Sale campaign works to educate communities on the dangers and surprising frequency of illegal tobacco sales to minors in New Mexico.
On this day, Evolvement youth engaged 20 individual New Mexico legislators to discuss the work that Evolvement is doing and reiterate its importance. For example, fellow Los Lunas Evolvers Frankie and Tyra met with our local Representative Kelly Fajardo; Evolvers Jaeann and Dezarea met with Senator Sander Rue; and Evolvers Eliana and Lea met with Senator Carroll Leavell. In the beginning, we were nervous about approaching our legislators, but they were incredibly open to hearing about our work and appeared to be very supportive and enthusiastic about it, which made it quite a pleasant experience. Meeting with these lawmakers was an eye-opening and educational experience.
Evolvement offers New Mexico youth the chance to do campaign work in a safe and constructive manner and gain priceless leadership opportunities. As a youth leader, this was a very important personal experience because I have family members who are now experiencing the negative effects of tobacco use. Knowing that this work could help New Mexico become safer makes me feel like I am part of an incredible, worthwhile movement that will also help me grow as a person. To continue promoting our campaign work, I will attend events to educate these groups on ending illegal tobacco sales to minors and meet with my principals and administrators to ensure that our school tobacco policies are 100% comprehensive. I will also talk to the people in my life about tobacco use so that we can come together to combat the use of this deadly product.
Hello! My name is Lyndsey and I am a senior at Cosby High School in Virginia. I joined Y Street during my sophomore year and it has made a huge contribution to my development, especially when I became a Y Street Leadership Team Member from my junior year on.
I initially joined this highly impactful, youth-led organization because of a dear friend and found my own passions quickly sparked by the campaigns that Y Street works on. I felt the organization rapidly responded to the general issues of obesity and tobacco in Virginia.
On January 25, 2018, which was Healthy Youth Day, a few ambitious Y-Sters and Y Street Leadership Team members teamed up to share our voices with key decision-makers at the General Assembly of Virginia. Some of these decision-makers included State Senators, Delegates, and Legislative Aids.
The day started with a networking breakfast where Y-Sters got the chance to speak with Delegates, Senators, and VFHY staff. We led detailed discussions which helped enhance our networking abilities and develop our leadership skills.
After the breakfast, we walked to the General Assembly for our scheduled meetings. While simply catching a glimpse of my surroundings in the buildings, I felt such a calm intensity as I reflected on the history of legislative mastery. I felt very confident in our goals and our need for change. These, I thought, are the people who can immediately take action after listening to what we know, what we have collected from Virginians who are spread far and wide. Y-Sters, who have been aided and guided by our advisors, can help bring legislative action into fruition, simply by conversing with those who will listen.
Following our networking breakfast, I held three meetings with Legislative Aides. My first meeting allowed me to present myself as an advocate for our growing Fresh Spot campaign, which you can support at FreshSpotVA.com! I explained that we are striving for a political understanding of community-based need revolving around guaranteed fresh produce, further economic opportunity through job growth, and the later impact of establishing healthier neighborhoods.
The last two meetings I participated in were with two fellow Y-Sters, Kit Harmon and then Gabriel Fisher, both outstanding YSLT members as ready for change as I am. These two meetings were focused on our 24/7 campaign, which gave me great comfort because of the opportunities offered to myself and many others during the past two years. What amazes me is that since I became a member, we have added over 11 divisions to our 100% Comprehensive Map, and it’s been such an honor to contribute to that through school board meetings in Petersburg, Dinwiddie, and Hopewell.
During all of my presentations I also provided information about out Great Starts With Breakfast campaign, which includes Y-Sters having the opportunity to coordinate principal meetings in order to aid the implementation of alternative breakfast models within individual schools, depending on administrative flexibility and student requests.
After providing key decision-makers with precise statistics of the progress we’ve made through our advocacy efforts, such as the addition of comprehensive divisions or messages on our campaign websites, we encouraged policy changes that were based in the best interest of the people impacted by our 24/7, FreshSpot, and Great Starts With Breakfast initiatives!
Witnessing the depth, obstacles, and procedures that are common in legislative processes truly expanded my perspective of policymaking and left me with a great impression of our key decision-makers, who are advocating for some of the same causes we are. The sole difference is that they have the second piece of the campaigning puzzle: the ability to enforce! Throughout Healthy Youth Day, our impending campaign goals felt closer with each passing minute, and I realized that there is still so much we can do as a part of the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth. It was, indeed, a Happy Healthy Youth Day, but I say let it be Healthy Youth Month and Healthy Youth Year!
My name is Jaedan Marquez. I am currently in my junior year at Arrowhead Park Early College High School and I’ve been a member of Evolvement since my freshmen year. This year I have worked on the No Minor Sale campaign at the Diez y Seis de Septiembre Fiesta in Mesilla, NM and also presented this campaign to the Sunrise Loins Club in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The reason I have taken the initiative to participate in these events is because I have two nieces and one more on the way. I want them to grow up in an environment where underage smoking is nonexistent and not another thing, that is bad for them that they could get introduced to.
On January 25th, my partner, Chriss Wright and I, presented the first ever No Minor Sale partner presentation to the Sunrise Lions Club of Las Cruces. During this event we collected a total of nine support cards. The members of the Lions Club were very intrigued by what we were saying and presented us with many questions about what our group is doing to educate our peers. It was inspiring to hear their stories of how they got into tobacco and the pop culture surrounding it when they were our age and how they don’t want the same influence on today’s youth. Meeting with the Sunrise Lions Club of Las Cruces was a wonderful experience for Chriss and I. These and other events are experiences that we hope to continue to encounter in the future.
If we unite as a community, we can educate the general populous about the negative effects of tobacco sales to minors. By reaching out to the community, at local events, we are able to educate and be the face of the No Minor Sale campaign. I look forward to new events to continue to create urgency to end illegal tobacco sales to minors.
I’m Belle and I’m a senior at Central High School in Woodstock, VA. This is my second year in Y Street and my first year on the Y Street Leadership Team. My favorite campaign is the 24/7 campaign because of how much it can change schools all around Virginia.
The main issue that the 24/7 campaign tries to solve is getting schools to be 100% tobacco-free and making the rules more specific to the people who are on campus regularly and those who visit. There are many dangers that come with tobacco rules not being enforced, like parents smoking on campus because they don’t see a sign or don’t believe that the rules are enforced. Kids could be getting pressured into starting to use tobacco products because everyone else does it and it’s just a cool thing. When your school becomes 100% tobacco-free, Y Street will send you free window stickers, metal signs, and a big poster to be hung up somewhere in your school. We want to try to get more schools in Virginia on our 100% comprehensive map this year and get more people engaged in our campaign.
This campaign can help out our communities by showing young kids and teenagers that smoking really isn’t all that cool and is just really a dangerous thing you’re doing to your body. This could help impact young kids by not introducing them to the tobacco lifestyle. Being a tobacco-free school can help the students see that they don’t need that in their lives and it won’t help them concentrate better in school or with classwork. My school is not yet tobacco-free, but I’ve had 2 principal meetings and a school board meeting. My goal is for my school to be on the 100% comprehensive map before I graduate. I believe the 24/7 campaign is an important campaign because it can help the future generation and hopefully reduce the amount of tobacco products being made and sold to people around not only Virginia, but in every other place.
On February 14, Y Street will host our annual Tobacco-Free Spirit Day to celebrate all the Virginia schools and divisions with comprehensive tobacco-free policies. For more information on Tobacco-Free Spirit Day and to sign up your comprehensive school or division to participate, please go to 247campaignva.com/spiritday.
Hello my name is Kevin Pulido, I am in the 10th grade at Roswell High School. I am an active member with Evolvement New Mexico, a youth led movement promoting a healthier New Mexico. I have been working with the 24/7 campaign for the past year to help all of New Mexico’s schools become tobacco-free. With Evolvement and the 24/7 campaign I have conducted principal meetings and presented at multiple school board meetings.
On December 12th Roswell Independent School District adopted a 100% comprehensive tobacco free policy. When I spoke with my classmate, Adrian Rodriguez, at the first school board meeting at first I was nervous, but when I started it went great. We talked about how the tobacco policy is not updated, and how we can update it and its benefits. The board members were very impressed and it was very helpful because now our policy is updated to be truly tobacco-free.
Roswell Independent School District is the very first school district in New Mexico to be recognized by the Department of Health as truly tobacco-free. This new policy benefits students in the entire district. Now, every school in the Roswell Independent School District will receive 24/7 campaign resources including:
• Bilingual tobacco free signs to hang around school campuses;
• 24/7 toolkit with resources for education, compliance, and enforcement of the truly tobacco free policy as well as cessation and support materials;
• Ongoing support in communicating and enforcing the policy.
I am very excited that Roswell Independent School District listened to youth activists like myself and decided to adopt this policy. I am proud with the work I have done with Evolvement and the 24/7 campaign and I am hopeful that other districts in New Mexico will also adopt a 100% comprehensive tobacco free policy.
Watch the full story here.
This poem was written by Evolvement New Mexico Leadership Team Member Charlotte Stalker, senior at Arrowhead Park Early College HS in Las Cruces, about the 24/7 campaign – helping schools be tobacco-free 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This is me, Tobacco-Free
Tobacco in schools chokes my future.
It steals my job potential like a bully asking for lunch money.
They tell us to follow our dreams, but offer no help when our dreams are lost to addiction.
Teachers will say don’t smoke, but mean don’t get caught.
When students are lost, the future is lost.
Tobacco in locker rooms, teacher lounges, parking lots, bleachers,
it tells us it’s ok.
Ignoring the consequences.
The job loss, the cancer, the broken relationships.
The death.
To be tobacco-free to be free.
Free of the control from a substance that hurts you.
Free of the businesses that see you as a number on a page.
Free of the chain that keeps you from places you’ve always meant to go.
It’s easier to never start than ever stop.
Tobacco-free means freedom.
Be free.