Health Rocks!

The program started with the Mississippi State Cooperative Extension service. My 4-H agent saw the program and thought it would be extremely beneficial to do in Kentucky since it has the highest percentage of smokers in the United States. My 4-H agent rounded up myself and one other teen to participate in a local train the trainer two day health rocks workshop. After this workshop we were certified to teach the programs and practiced teaching them at the workshop. We then rounded up a few more teens and went to Arkansas for more extensive training. Once at least one teen and adult is trained in Health Rocks then you are certified to train others. After the training we contacted local elementary and middle schools in our county and set up days to come in and do the activities with students. After several school programs we then incorporated it into 4-H day camps to reach more youth. Here is an excerpt from our first day camp: Fayette County Cooperative Extension Service planned, facilitated and evaluated a three day camp with six hours of Health Rocks curriculum lessons with 42 youth ages 8-13. Activities included learning how drugs and alcohol impact different people, health and cosmetic effects of using drugs and alcohol, identifying risks and understanding howmedia affects your choices; and differences between facts and fables were presented by three trained Health Rocks teen facilitators. An end of programevaluation revealed 94% of the participants learned planned objectives and 100% pledged to be drug and alcohol free. This was a great program we have recently received a $2000 grant to implement in other 4-H events in the future. That was in 2007 and to date we have continued with the program and impacted over 500 youth between the ages of 8 and 12.