Youth Leadership Institute

Marshall QU²AD? Huh?

Questioning Unspoken Underage Drinking (QU²AD) is a group formed by students in Thurgood Marshall Academic High School (TMAHS), with the help of the Youth Leadership Institute(YLI). We get together after school on Thursdays afternoons to work on a social norm campaign, discuss the problem of underage drinking, and how to spread the word about the situation that minors are going through. We have already sent out surveys and collected data from our fellow students at TMAHS, and we are quite happy and surprised with our research. Now we are discussing the possibilities and options about how to spread our research to our school, and hopefully, we will see some changes!

In the mean time, check out our facebook page, here! and support our group by pressing Like! FOr more information on Positive Social Norms Campaigns please visit mostofus.org

Washington Positive Peer Pressure (Px3), WHO?

Washington Px3 is a group of 15 students from George Washington High school in San Francisco. We represent every grade, ethnicity, gender and cultural background at our school. We come together once a week with Kristen from the Youth Leadership Institute (YLI.org) to work on a social norms campaign to raise awareness about the positive behaviors teen engage in at our school. Our goal is to reach out to every student, faculty member and parent in order to change their perception regarding underage alcohol use. We want to inform them that teens don’t actually drink as much as they think we do and hopefully this will decrease the number of teens who do drink. We have collected data from students in various grades at our school to learn more about their personal alcohol consumption and their perceptions about our peer’s alcohol use. We want to use the data to change the perceptions that teens drink too much. We hope that the positive peer pressure from our media will decrease underage drinking at our school. We are not going to use negative assumptions but focus on the positive data collected from actual teenagers. We are in the process of creating media for our social norms campaign that will be accessed through our facebook page, posters, YouTube videos and other announcements and media around school campus. We will be sending our positive messages to students, faculty and staff and parents!

Click here if you would like to view our facebook page and learn more about us and when you’re at it don’t forget to LIKE our page! For more information and examples about other social norms campaigns visit mostofus.org.

Youth leadership In SF Alcohol Prevention

In 2010-2011, Youth leaders from 10 different organizations around SF are taking direct action to address alcohol and other drug problems using environmental prevention strategies. With funding from the SF Department of Public Health, YLI is providing TA and training to each organization to help youth leaders develop relevant and powerful projects that address media, access, norms and policies that impact underage drinking in SF. This blog is a place for youth leaders, staff and others to share what they are doing and what they are learning. if you have an story, lesson, example, tool, video, or photo you want to share, send it to mrosen@yli.org. He’ll post it on this site. Feel free to comment on anything you see here.

Thanks for participating!

San Francisco Youth Creating Community Change (SYCCC) Prevention Coalition

Our Goal: To reduce underage drinking and alcohol-related problems by reducing youth alcohol access and change community alcohol norms across San Francisco.

Steps we will take: Our Coalition will choose a specific issue related to access or norms, develop select a concrete action that we can take, and carry out a campaign.

Why do we need a coalition to do alcohol prevention work?

In our Coalition, we are not trying to change individuals one at a time. The kind of prevention work we are going to do focuses on changing the social, political, and physical environment that creates alcohol problems for our communities. Changing the environment means challenging institutions, decision-makers and others who have power. In order to do this, we need people power and the resources of lots of groups. Coalitions “maximize the power of individuals through joint action.”[1]

What will coalition members do?

Meet monthly to make key decisions about what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.
Talk with other people in the community about what we want to do; and get their ideas, buy-in, and support.
Participate in campaign events, like meetings with elected officials and press conferences

What are some different examples of actions we could take?

The Coalition, not YLI, will decide the key issue and specific action we want to take. We will use a short, clear process to figure out what our priorities for action are. See the back of this page for ideas!

Coalition Members: You can get all handouts from the first meeting here:

Alcohol in SF Fact Sheet

Prevention Coalition Campaign Ideas

Listening Homework Assignment

Who else should we invite? (Form)

[1] Wandersman, et al. 2002. In Minkler. 2002. Community Organizing and Community Building for Health.

San Francisco Youth Speak in Favor of a Fee on Alcohol

On Wednesday, August 4, 2010, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget/Finance Committee met to discuss and take public comment on a proposed fee on alcohol. There to relate their experiences and speak in favor of the fee were youth from Youth Leadership Institute’s San Francisco Community Action Live (SFCAL) youth council.

Dozens of fee proponents from throughout the community gathered before the hearing for a press conference. Among the press event speakers was SFCAL youth advocate Erika Ponce, who spoke about the impacts she has personally experienced and the concern local youth share about alcohol harms to their community. Erika went on to share the importance of this fee in an interview with a local television affiliate of Univision.

Youth members of SFCAL also testified at the Board hearing. Josh Pooner stated “we already know that youth are targeted in their community and most influenced by what’s around them in their environment”. Josh also asserted that San Francisco’s appeal to visitors worldwide is far too strong for the fee to impact tourism. Representatives from a range of community groups joined SFCAL in voicing their support, including speakers from the San Francisco Firefighter’s Union, Walden House treatment center, HORIZONS Unlimited, the Latino Commission, and Marin Institute, an alcohol watchdog agency.

If adopted, San Francisco’s proposed “Charge for Harm” fee would recuperate some of the costs to municipal services from alcohol use, such as paramedic services, hospitalization, police/fire and essential substance abuse prevention services. Not a tax, the proposed fee would be dedicated to directly offsetting the at least $17 million annual impact on city services from alcohol related harms. The fee would be charged to wholesalers on a per-ounce basis and would come down to about an additional 5¢ per drink at the consumer level.

The Budget/Finance committee is scheduled meet again on Tuesday, September 7th to discuss further and vote on the fee legislation. SFCAL and community partners will be there again to voice their support.