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MACRO POST 4

With this as my last post, I would like to summarize the whole experience of working with JOCO angels. With the making of the presentation and the video for our practicum, we were able to recollect the various thing we participated in and the various message we were able to take home and apply in our lives. Firstly, about JOCO angels, they were a group created by people who lost their near and dear ones to substance abuse. They started this group as an initiative to provide resources and education to young people who are affected by the influence of substances such as prescription opioids, drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, or vaping. Their goals were to raise opioid awareness, prevent opioid abuse, and help those affected with opioid use disorder. With these as their goals, they have joined hands with various faith-based institutions and organizations to raise awareness. They conduct many events on opioid abuse, overdose, and recovery from substance use. Some of the recent event conducted was the overdose awareness day, 12 stones recovery event, and weekly cornerstone teen recovery. We attended a few meetings with the team and discussed their future goal and upcoming events. We also were part of the weekly cornerstone teen recovery event which had discussions, music, and worship. We discussed various topics during the event such as letting go of our baggage and opening up to others and not suppressing our feelings. Our team members also spoke to the members in the group about peer pressure, bad relationships, how to maintain good friendships, and also about situations where saying no is the right option to go for. All these events were very eye-opening and informative and the message given are some things we could utilize in our day-to-day lives. One of the major and important events we worked during our semester was the red ribbon week. During the preparation of the event, we contacted schools, created sample posters, created videos, testimonies, bows (we made 700 which took a lot of time and effort) which symbolized the red ribbon week, emailed our ideas and posters to the schools, and got their approval to conduct the event, we created resource brochures, conducted poster competition and judged them and provided them with a pizza party and ice cream party as the winning prize. We were able to speak with the students and encouraged them to review the event we conducted for them. We received a lot of reviews and suggestions from the students. Some of them were about their struggles with substance use and some were suggestions on how to make the event even better.

Some of the quotes from the kids: “A lot happened over the summer and it ended in me being taken away from my mom and placed with my dad 24 / 7 and a lot that happened during that time could have been prevented by not taking drugs, because drugs rip families, friends, and more apart. because you convince yourself you are fine,that the drugs don't do any harm,i will quit them in a week . But because of that mindset so many young and old people die because of overdosing so this means to me that I hope everyone is one day drug free and I know this poster doesn't do much for that cause but it's a 1 /2 step in the right direction.” “In my opinion it sends out a message on what it can do to you and how bad it can get with drugs. A lot of people fall for it and think it'll be fine but they wont it screws you up. A lot of kids fall for it out of peer pressure but you dont have to do it.” “I couldn't have the prize because it was pizza and ice cream and i'm lactose intolerant. I just felt left out and I feel like they should have had an option for everyone.”

Seeing these quotes from young people makes us feel that we had done something right to help them effectively. Along with educating the teens on substance use and abuse we also learned how to interact and communicate with students, how to communicate with school organizations, collect resources, research the statistics of substance and identify the vulnerable groups and mainly how to be organized and work better in a group. We also were able to realize how some things which we learned during classes were realistically happening and how unaware are people of these public health issues. Some things that shocked me was learning and experiencing that teenager and African Americans were the most vulnerable population to substance abuse and many of the adults who suffer from recovery from substance use are ones who started using substances at a very young age. Some of the positives that came from this experience were to introduce communication with faith-based organizations and opioid recovery-related institutions and also communicating with schools and forming a relationship with them and encouraging them to continue working with JOCO angels and the public health department in educating the students with future events. We wanted to work with the wake monarch academy and also with the high schoolers about substance use and the issues associated with it and also with parents and create videos for how to identify mental health issues with their children and how to look out for their children if they are struggling, about the resources available and mainly educating parents to talk to their children about all these issues openly and freely. But unfortunately, we were unable to connect with them due to Covid-19 restrictions and time constraints. We hope that this initiation will continue and further continue to work with Campbell university in promoting awareness on opioid abuse and recovery.

[nivithasree]

MACRO POST 3

With the red ribbon week coming up in a few weeks our team was energetic and excited to meet with the students of the middle schools. with the videos and the posters being ready to be displayed in the schools we started to work on providing every student with some reminder for this event so we came up with an idea to make red bow pins to distribute to the student to symbolize the red ribbon week which could also be used as a memory of the event and a reminder for them to say no to drugs. Apart from the posters and the pins, we wanted to provide them with some resources that the middle schoolers could use in the future that might help them in time of need. Hence, we came with a plan to make brochures with a few facts about opioid addiction, statistics and data on substance abuse, helpline number for substance abuse and mental health services administration (SAMHSA) to seek help and also, we included signs of overdose and first aid for overdose and counseling and assessment services for them to seek help if need. after the completion of the required need for the event, we contacted the school counselor to sort out a few last details such as the number of students and number of participants for the poster contest and the schedule for the red ribbon week and the event. At both, schools the interactive video and the testimony video was played prior to the event. On the day of the event on the 29th of October, we visited the Benson middle school in the morning followed by McGee’s crossroad middle school in the afternoon. The schools have arranged their posters for the poster competition and they were presented on the walls of each homeroom. We were able to judge these posters and score them according to their use of quotes, illustrations, messages they spread, and their usage of the ultimate theme “the red ribbon week” and “Drug-free me looks like me”. There were several amazing posters made by these children which were difficult to judge and select just a few among them but we decided on selecting one for each grade and among them present the winner and two runners-up. These middle schoolers came up with several innovative and unique quotes to make their posters unique and they were able to represent the theme of the competition with unique animations and other visual representations. On the visitation of the results day, all the students in the school were very eager to hear who won. Then the winning classes were presented with a pizza and ice cream party which were a winner among the students. We were able to speak to the student from some classes and get to know their thoughts on this initiative. A lot of the students were already aware of the information on substance abuse and they were very determined to stay away from it. And some who were not aware of the consequences got to learn and pick up a few good things from this event conducted to educate them. With these kinds of initiatives, we wanted to involve the students to be a part of the learning process and get their hands on creating posters by which they will be more informed on the perils of substance use. We later distribute the brochures one in each homeroom, to sum up, all the things they’ve learned with the details on how to help someone they know with facts and helplines. Team angels with JOCO angels we were able to accomplish some of our goals this semester by creating awareness on addiction to these young minds. We would like to sow in the benefits of staying away from drugs and like to let it grow in their minds. We know that a small step is all that is needed to create a big impact in people’s lives especially with a young kid who is going to be the future of this world. I also believe that these initiatives be continued throughout so that even if there is 50 percent of these students learn something from these events then we might a 50 percent more change to reduce substance abuse among teens.

[nivithasree]

MACRO POST 2

After finalizing the project that we were going to work on for this semester, we started our practicum with event planning. For the past few weeks, our team has been working on spreading awareness about substance use and abuse for middle schoolers. We planned to carry this through conducting a poster contest and a virtual/in-person meet with students or through providing them with videos or testimonials of people in recovery. We started to contact middle schools and high schools in Johnston County to participate in our campaign and described to them the various project ideas we had had for the students to get involved and get educated on the perils of substance use. we started contacting various schools through email and we waited for their acceptance of the program. We were not sure if we would be able to work with school-goers with covid and its restrictions. At last, we were fortunate enough to get in touch with two middle schools for conducting the event at their schools. With only a few weeks left for Red Ribbon Week, our team and the JOCO angels’ team has been working with us to present a project for two middle schools from Johnston County, they are the Benson middle school and the McGee’s crossroad middle school. This event was to bring awareness to them about peer pressure and substances such as tobacco, alcohol, and drugs including prescription medication. We are conducting a two-day meeting with the schools with fun as well as an educative poster contest and a presentation with video demonstration and testimonies to spread this message of “SAY NO TO SUBSTANCE USE”. We have created two posters for students as a model for them for the contest. Apart from this, we have also planned to conduct a pizza and ice-cream party for the student as a part of the red ribbon week. We hope that this small part we play would create positivity among students and promote education on the harmfulness of substance use on their physical and mental health. The first video we have created consists of three scenarios. The first scenario demonstrates peer pressure, smoking, and bullying. The second scenario shows alcohol and drug abuse and also the dangers of underage drinking and the last clip show drug overdose and fear of stigmatization. Each of the scenarios has a question to go with it that students have to identify and at the end of each scenario a message related to the scene will be provided in the form of a presentation. Apart from the presentation students are provided with resources for them to use if they need help. The second video is a testimony from a teenager who has lost their dear ones to substance abuse. The testimony represents how they suffered from mental health issues and issues with fitting into a new place and that it would be easier to become friends with a group of kids who relate to each other only due to smoking or alcohol use to fit in. This testimony also speaks about how important it is to pay attention to our mental health and how important it is to keep our morals intact. During these weeks I have learned and participated in a lot of new things that I have never experienced up until now. Coming from a background with minimum knowledge on substance use I have educated myself on how people cope with substance use through videos and through reading few articles. I have come to know that a lot of the student and people in general who are impacted by the use of substances have had experienced trauma and has turned to the use of substances as a coping mechanism for it. Hope these small projects conducted to educated middle schoolers about the dangers of substances and peer pressure has a positive effect on them to say “NO” to peers and use of substances and to affirm them that they are not alone in the process of realization and recovery.

[nivithasree]

MACRO POST 1

MACRO POST 1:

The first week of starting with our graduate studies we had scheduled our meeting with our preceptors JOCO angels. On our first meeting we had a virtual meeting with the team of JOCO angels and we discussed various topic about how they work, what their main goal was, and how their events are conducted, their partners and all the events they conducted. Then we were asked to present some ideas which we were interested to work with and also, they provided with ideas on what we could do for our practicum. Being their first time working with Campbell student they provided us the privilege to choose our own project and gave us the complete leadership of it and they wanted to use our own imagination and creativity to come up with project ideas and implementation of the project. Hence, for the first few weeks we worked on collecting data and coming up with our own projects for the semester. We individually came up with ideas on which we could work as a group. We were able to bring up ideas for events, we came up with advocacy for the parents and school goers, we also included coming up with support videos and testimonials with people who suffered from substance use and what journey they went through with recovery, including communication strategies and platforms to spread across about our awareness program. We researched articles and statistics on substance use and abuse, various prescription drug abuse data, data on medication-assisted treatment for opioid overdose, and availability of treatment and mental health treatment options available. We came up with ideas for newsletters. We came up with plans to implement in our meetings and schedules. We meet with the JOCO angels’ team every week to discuss our weekly progress. On the next virtual call we meet with the JOCO angels team with all the ideas to discuss and we got to finalized our project as the events for educating middle schoolers and high schoolers on substance use and abuse and the dangers involved with it. Meanwhile, we had the overdose awareness week coming up on August 29 and the team of JOCO angels had planned an event with music, food, testimony, worship, and candle lighting as part of the event for awareness. Even though I was not able to attend the event in person I was able to get to know the work they did in the event. That event brought us to light about the various issue associated with opioid abuse and addiction. They had music, food and also many had shared their testimonies and how they overcame their problems and how worship had helped them through the process of recovery. There were photos of people who had lost their life to substance use and behind each lives lost there was an untold story of their mental health struggles. They also mentioned about a lot of the issue faced by those victims with regards to mental health. Before joining this program, I have not had much experience about the prevalence of these public health issue. So, with this kind of exposure I was able to gain a lot of knowledge on the various public health crisis such as the opioid epidemic which was affecting not parts of the world and how rural areas were more affected by this issue than the urban areas. Proper access to medication services and healthcare facilities is still some of the problems faced by many rural places. While researching I came across certain articles which stated that young people are more affected by the opioid epidemic than older people and the rate of overdose deaths is also increasing every year. This is especially true in rural areas. Hence, working in a project which will help young people recognize the harmfulness of substance use is the main goal of our team.

[nivithasree]

This week we were able to participate in the weekly event in the JMC church. Harshil and Quan were able to reach out to the cornerstone team and speak to the teens group about important topic such as negativity, peer pressure, wrong friendships, family situations etc., which will lead us to making some wrong decisions in our lives and how to overcome such situations.

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Posters made by the students of Benson and McGee’s middle schools

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We visited the schools to speak with the middle schoolers about the videos and testimonies and the message it represented and we also got to judge the amazing posters presented by each of the home rooms on red ribbon week.

[nivithasree]

We participated in a church event at corner stones. We had the chance to participate and speak about things that we would like to learn about ourselves and how to learn to let go of our baggage's. We also had the opportunity to listen to testimonies about substance use recover process from few of the participants.

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Last week we had a meeting with the school counsellor of Benson middle school to discuss the event schedule and the timing for the judging the poster competition. We also had a discussion on the video presentation and resource brochures to distribute to the student.

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We had a meeting with Kelly from JOCO angels team to discuss about the red ribbon week event and the prize options to present to the winners and runner ups of the poster contest.

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We made ribbons which denote the red ribbon week logo to distribute to the middle schools in Johnston County during the event

#TeamJocoangels

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Past week we worked on creating models posters for the poster contest for the Red Ribbon Week held at two middle schools in Johnston County to bring awareness for the Substance use and peer pressure.

[nivithasree]

Opioid addiction claims over thousands of lives each year.

Drug overdose deaths has raised over 30% from 71000 in 2019 to 93000 in 2020.

This is said to be the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded.

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