Wilson County, Kansas
“My name is Stacey Ray and I live in Wilson County and I oversee a couple of our coalition’s drug prevention programs and I also work with the health department on their drug endangered children grant. I contacted an area resource up in Iola and they told me that he had done a presentation over there, so then I contacted the principal over and there and she gave him rave reviews and I’m like, okay, great. Let’s bring him to Wilson County. I think it’s amazing. And I didn’t watch a lot of the videos before I brought him, but just in speaking with him, I could sense his passion and his energy. And I knew he would be great with the kids, really engaging him just with all of that energy and his willingness to be silly.
If they were on the fence about bringing him, would say watch some of his videos, but most important just talk with him personally. And I mean, we’re a small county. We have less than 9,000 people and he really engaged all of the kids. And I loved his presentation with the staff.
I loved that just as much is with the kids. I loved hearing their responses and I thought he had great questions. I think our youth based members, a lot of our youth groups would eat this up.”
Montgomery County, Kansas
Chelsea Martin is a school counselor at Fredonia Junior Senior High School.
She learned about Vive18 a couple years ago at in Montgomery County, Kansas.
“I like that they bring a lot of energy and interactive opportunities for our students so it’s not just a sit and listen but they are able to interact and get the information in a fun, relatable way.
With Vive18 being here today, I think that it will be able to give our school and our students the opportunity to have conversations with each other, but also be brave to start recognizing that there’s a problem and that they want to help each other.”
Vive18 assemblies, toolkit, peer-led program and conference are high energy and fun!
Neodesha, Kansas
I’m Eric Swanson. I’m the principal at Neodesha High School in Neodesha, Kansas. We’re a small school in Southeast Kansas. We have approximately 360 kids in grades seven through twelve.
We had Jake from Vive18 today. The day kicked off with him meeting with our staff. We had a professional development day planned anyway and Jake came in and spent an hour with the staff going through what the presentation was going to be with the kids and then how we could support the kids afterwards. That was a really good hour to spend. Sometimes you have assemblies come in and you really don’t know what it’s going to be about. And you could win kind of blind, with this one, Jake came in to spend an hour with our staff and that was very much appreciated.
I like that Jake talked about goal setting. We’re doing a lot of goal setting right now with our Leader in Me program. Our kids are developing wildly important goals. We call them wigs. So it’s nice to be able to hear him talk about barriers to achieving goals as well as things you can do to help achieve those goals because it fits right in with what we’re doing with our character education.
(If you’re thinking about having Vive18 at your high school)… I’d say definitely pull the trigger. There’s places out there to help with that funding. I know that Jake had been to Independence, Kansas, just down the road from us and some of our kids had heard him and some of our staff had heard him. And when he when he showed up this morning, I had a couple of staff members say, that’s the guy we saw a couple of years ago. So they were really excited to bring him back.
The fact that he was coming here to see our kids. Anybody, anybody who works with kids, any kids. It’s not the same old don’t do drugs campaign. It’s not somebody preaching at you. It’s not somebody telling a sad story. Jake will say that in his presentation, he’s not telling you a sad story. He’s just giving you some facts and he’s gonna let you make that decision yourself.
Jake gets the audience involved a lot. It’s not just sitting, he’s talking to the kids. He gets them involved, he has them, he does some demonstrations with them. They play a game with them. He even encourages them to yell out the answers. And you know, as a principal of the high school, I cringe when I’ve got 300 kids yelling things in the auditorium, but Jake was encouraging that to get them active and participating in the program.
Lola, Kansas
April Jackson is Thrive Allen County’s Rural Health Coordinator, responsible for six counties of the Southeast Kansas Substance Misuse Prevention Coalition. She was looking for a positive, engaging speaker to speak to students and youth at her middle and high schools on the topic of vaping, marijuana / THC and alcohol. April found Vive18 drug prevention speaker Jake White on the CADCA online forum for coalition leaders across the nation. The idea hosting sober social events with her students on the youth prevention coalition really caught her attention. She said the students really had fun listening to the positive message that you can have fun without drugs or drinking. Dan, the media coordinator and former Upward Bound program director said, “It was an honest, real and clear message that didn’t come across as preachy. Jake is such a natural, authentic speaker.” April said that the marijuana piece of the presentation really showed how much student don’t know about cannabis.
They truly believed that cannabis products aren’t addictive and Jake was able to show them otherwise. We need to keep doing this important education. She also appreciated that Jake showed the students how to get those good feelings without using drugs. The presentation had an overall theme about choices that we make every day. Life has meaning and purpose and every person matters. Both Dan and April said that everyone should hear Vive18’s message because it’s positive, non-judgmental and loving.
