Hillsboro Final Video

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Long, But Successful Day, Part Two!

Hi again!

When we were planning our project, we really wanted to include the whole community as much as possible, so the project also included an evening community event.

Every spring our chapter does a steak and chicken cookout fundraiser that people have come to expect every year, so we decided to coincide our supper (from 5 to 7 pm) with an evening program that began at 7:00.

We also had a couple of fun things going on that people could participate in. The Safe Communities Coalition of the Red River Valley provided us with a set of Fatal Vision drunk goggles that people could wear while playing Mario Kart on a Nintendo Wii. Also, our regional prevention coordinator helped us by providing a SIDNE (Simulated Impaired DriviNg Experience) cart and obstacle course. A lot of people, including parents and their kids, took part in that.

We had good attendance by a wide variety of community members and parents at the program. We explained our project to them, showed them the "tk cr b4 2 l8" video and our new SADD presentation video. We wanted to show them the SADD video so that they could see and hear from young people who are doing everything they can to make good decisions and help their friends.

The evening ended with a program called BreakDown. It's a high-tech presentation that includes drama, dance, testimonials and motivational speeches that deal with sexual activity. A lot of Hillsboro students are involved as dancers or actors, and putting on a show for the home crowd was a great way to end the day.

Long, But Successful Day, Part One.

Hey, everyone -

Our "Keep Your Summer Drive Alive" project yesterday was a big success. It was a long day for everyone involved, but well worth it in the end. Here is a recap of what went on:

In-school component:

The day began with a Grim Reaper Day project. We pre-selected 12 students, 3 from each of the 4 high school grades, to be "victims" pulled out of class roughly every half hour, to illustrate the fact that someone is killed in an alcohol-related crash about every 32 minutes. We didn't want to concentrate just on impaired driving, though, so we wrote scenarios for each of the crashes. Some of the crashes involved alcohol, but other ones were cases of distracted driving, falling asleep at the wheel, deaths that could have been avoided by wearing a seat belt, and others.

One of our team members, Brandon, wore a Grim Reaper outfit and was accompanied by a Hillsboro police officer, Officer Aventi, who read the crash scenario for the rest of the class. After the "victim" was taken from class, he or she was brought to the Board Room, where the officer showed some photos of crashes in the area and told the stories behind the crashes. Officer Aventi took time to explain some of the common reasons why young people get into crashes and that the summer months were the most dangerous for kids.

After this, the students were given the choice of filming a "goodbye video" for their family and friends.

The day ended with an assembly, where the victims were re-introduced and the scenarios read for the entire student body. Highway Patrol Officer Kyle Stern then addressed the students about some of the things he has seen and had to deal with in his line of work.

The in-school part of the project will actually conclude on Friday, May 8, when team members will lead a discussion on the video and lesson called "tk cr b4 2 l8". The video includes testimonies from young people who have survived a crash by wearing a seat belt, and also a very touching story from two girls who were survivors of a tragic crash that claimed the life of a younger boy from their school.

Awesome publicity!


The Hillsboro Banner wrote a great article publicizing our Keep Your Summer Drive Alive project, and placed the story on the front page! It included lots of statistics about youth-related crashes and described the community event.

Interview with law enforcement helpers