• Work in schools to better understand youth risk perceptions, usage, and access to drugs and alcohol (surveys and focus groups)
• Mentorship Progam to provide a caring adult role model to a student that could use a friend
• Provide adventure programing to students 

• Community outreach and messaging (billboards, radio PSAs, and social media)
• Provide information to educate caregivers and students on the effects of substance use (brochures, flyers, social media)

• Community Environmental Scans (going to local businesses to see how they market tobacco and alcohol to youth)
• SADD Club Partnership at Union County Middle and High School
• Other events to engage students in prevention messaging (art competition, youth poster designs, sticker shock campaigns)

• Coalition meetings that incorporate community stakeholders and influencers
• Community Outreach (distributing good, necessities, and finding out what other needs the community members and our youth might have)
• Resource Fairs and Speaking events that provide insight to substance situations in our community

• Department of Education, youth supplemental, pre-post program, caregiver, and volunteer surveys conducted to ensure accurate messages are communicated and youth needs are met 

Christy Foster

I started mentoring in the fall of 2023. I heard about the mentor program first through my employer right before school started in 2022. I wanted to become a mentor, but I was going through some struggles in my personal life due to just losing my husband a few months before unexpectedly.  Then the opportunity was presented to me again the following Spring and felt compelled to volunteer for this program. I felt like this would be a good opportunity not only for the child I would get to mentor but for my own self-healing. I talked it over with my daughters, and they both agreed that this would be something that I would enjoy since I always seem to be the kind of mom that love and treat other children like they were my own. When I started the following school year, I was given a very sweet little boy in the

3rd grade and with me having girls I knew very little about boys. I have learned a lot in my year of mentoring, and so glad I decided to become a mentor. I would not change anything and like I told him on the first day I meet him, I would be with him until he graduated high school!