May-Hightlighting our Youth

​While wrapping up the school year and ending many month long projects, RAD has decided to dedicate the month of May to our youth. During this month’s blog post, you will be able to see how much work our students have done to increase the well-being of their communities and their educational success. In addition, you will be able to capture how important it is to have strong partnerships with your youth, parents, community members and partnering agencies.

​Project Sticker Shock is an internship program designed to reach adults who might purchase alcohol legally and provide to minors. The students who partake in Project Sticker Shock are passionate about combating the legal purchasing of alcohol being provided to minors and indirectly try to reduce the number of youth who consume alcohol. The students who participate in this project place stickers that provide warnings about the penalties for furnishing alcohol to minors. These stickers are placed on all multi-packs of beer, alcopops, and other alcohol products that might be appealing to people under 21 years of age. Project Sticker Shock provides the opportunity for youth, parents, community partners, local retailers, law enforcement, and prevention professionals to create relationships to enhance the health of the community. In addition, it also raises awareness about the dangers of underage drinking. During this last fiscal year, students, from Day One, placed stickers throughout retailers in Pasadena and Altadena. Meanwhile, other students throughout the San Gabriel Valley placed stickers throughout their communities. The pictures below are from some of our Project Sticker Shock interns placing stickers at some of our local alcohol retailer locations. Thank you to our local retailers for helping us combat underage drinking!

​Youth Collision members throughout Pasadena decided to take Project Sticker Shock to another level by providing another perspective as to how alcohol has been a prominent  present in their community and in their lives. Through the Photo voice Project students used photography to capture moments that depicted how they perceive alcohol has impacted their community. Along with their photos, they wrote a short narrative to describe why the photo holds such significance and to illustrate the significant connection between alcohol and their lives. Indirectly, the photo voice project advocates for a finer environment. Below you will find the photos and narratives that the students submitted for this photo voice project.

​While completing the photo voice project in El Monte, youth were focused on marijuana dispensaries and how marijuana impacts their community. As they walked their neighborhoods, they came to a realization that there were no marijuana dispensaries that existed and that community members were pushing against allowing the development of cultivation sites, dispensaries, or research labs in their community. This shifted their gear towards smoke shops and liquor stores. Students realized that there was a high number of liquor stores and smoke shops. One thing that stood out to them was how close these sites were located to neighborhoods, schools and parks.  Below you will find some photos and narratives that some of the El Monte youth captured.

​Narrative: Even though I have only been living in El Monte for 4 years, I knew that alcohol has been a serious issue in our community for a long time. Drug stores are everywhere. It is part of the reason because it attracts people to buy it, but the bigger reason is people drink for fun, relaxing, and allaying depression. The reason I took this photo is because I want to tell all the alcoholics that the world without alcohol is still wonderful and hopeful. In the photo, the tree stump symbolizes an obstacle in our community, it is full of drinking bottles, broken glass, and drunk food. These things are blocking our people's way to look for a better, and a healthier life. Hope is in front of us, what we need to do is jump over these obstacles then you can figure out something even more fabulous. Let's drink less for a better life.

Narrative: The reason why I took this photo is that I saw a lot of liquor bottles' lids were all over the floor, and those few saplings that grow next to them made me feel a sense of violation. Saplings mean new life, and I would like to see them as our youth, or children that are even younger. They are little, immature, and the size of them are even smaller than a lid. Before they grow taller to become grass, just like how our youth transform into adults, they can be easily covered by a lid, or maybe lids. I don't want our youth to live and develop in that environment, it's dangerous and unpredictable. Alcohol is something that we would want to keep away from our youth, because we don't want to see them destroy or have some unchangeable impact on our youth.

​Narrative: This picture shows how cigarettes and bad chemicals have impacted nature. Just like if you continually smoke your organs will be black like the dirt. If you stop, the healthier you are like the plants.

​The ice-cream bus is the paradise where children can buy their childish enjoyment from on a casual cozy afternoon, and the smoke & vaping dispensary is the place where adults usually choose to satiate their addiction and dissipate various burdens from life. But when these two coexist with zero distance, it may imply an underrated nightmare for the whole community to be aware of, especially the teens. This indicates that kids as well as teenagers have a much higher accessibility to these products.
 
Given the fact that vaping, as well as smoking, always lead to a severe damage to the human’s respiratory system, which will emancipate to larger scales of outbreaks of lung illness as well as other health conditions like cough, shortness of breath, and diarrhea. More than 200 cases of lung illness caused by vaping have been reported in California, and of all the vaping users, two thirds are men 18-34. Smoking, with its larger popularization, will spread more potential health issues over the communities. Even the second-hand smoke may also harm the well-being of nearby family and friends. Once a kid is interested in the adult’s world, or regards that “smoking/vaping” is cool, a vicious cycle is thus formed. When a teen is addicted to them, the habit will hardly or never be turned down. Also, it may also lure the daring teens to try out “cooler” products like drugs, which have much higher severity than smoking.
 
Currently, the vaping and smoking stores in El Monte are located on the main streets, they are within walking distance from home, schools, and other stores. But all of these