PEER-EDUCATION PROGRAM USES FILM TO RELAY MESSAGE DRUG AND
ALCOHOL ABUSE
Article by Martin Burch - Santa Fe New Mexican
Intervention: Film to be shown in health classes at local high schools
Crying and bruised, Chris sits down on a curb near Rancho Viejo park wearing
only his boxer shorts. Two gang members, Marco and Arturo, approach and ask
him what happened. He eventually tells his story -- he was just thrown out
of his home by his abusive and alcoholic stepfather. The gangsters quickly
realize they have an opportunity to recruit him into their gang.
Arturo offers him a cigarette, while Marco offers him a bottle of booze. He
accepts both with little resistance. Then they "rank" him into the gang.
Marco and Arturo throw him to the ground and beat him up for 13 seconds to
prove he's "down for this," as Arturo says.
"Cut!" director Lisa Goldman shouts. "Now let's get some pickup shots."
Cinematographer Conci Althouse, 17, turns off her camera and moves closer to
the action for the close-up shots, while Grant Duke -- who plays Chris --
dusts himself off and Estevan Padilla (Arturo) gets another cigarette ready.
Juan Duarte (Marco) talks with Goldman about his lines.
Goldman is a local middle-school and high-school teacher who's helping teens
develop a new program to prevent drug and alcohol abuse. Through the
program, called Peer Education on Drugs and Alcohol, seven Santa Fe teens
have been working since June to design public-school health classes that
teach students alternatives to drug and alcohol abuse.
PEDA is a mix of re-enactments based on personal experiences, such as Chris'
story and recorded testimonials from teen drug users, and thought-provoking
facts and questions presented by local teens.
PEDA originated with Margaret Oster after her daughter was killed in 2000 by
a drunken driver with a "drug cocktail" in his system.
The driver told the
judge he was a victim of society because he started using drugs and alcohol
when he was 13 years old, Oster said. No education or prevention programs
were available to him, the driver said.
"That rang a little bell," Oster said. "I said, 'OK. This is it. Let's go
for prevention.' "
She started speaking to students, but they weren't listening. "They didn't
care if somebody became a victim because it's not them," she said. "They all
think it's not going to happen to them."
So she handed out anonymous surveys that asked how a prevention program
should be taught. Peer education was the answer, she said.
Armed with a $30,000 grant from the New Mexico Traffic Safety Bureau's drug
prevention and treatment fund, Oster asked Warehouse 21 to produce the film
from a "skeleton script" she had written.
"Basically we took her script and got the general message from it and then
tore apart the dialogue and rewrote it so teenagers would actually
understand it," said Vera Esquibel, one of seven teens who worked on the
project.
For three weeks -- working five-hour days four times a week -- these 15-
through 18-year-olds worked to make the program have an impact.
"Being a teenager myself, even though I've experimented like every other
teenager, I really realize that it's important for kids to be proactive and
experiment in other ways with their lives rather than just with all these
toxins," Althouse said.
Althouse is filming the re-enactments so they depict the effects of
substance abuse on local teenagers in a realistic way. "It's good for kids
to understand that this hits close to home," she said. "When something hits
close to home, that's when change is created."
But this program isn't just about telling teenagers not to take drugs;
that's a message teenagers get from all angles -- from public-service
announcements to motivational speakers at school assemblies.
"We don't want to preach at all," Goldman said. "We don't want to just
present the negative consequences of these actions; we're going to present
alternatives."
Following Chris' scene, she said, local teen Estevan Padilla will talk about
what he does with his life now that he isn't involved in drugs and gangs.
"Now he's taken up boxing, and that's his passion instead of drugs and
gangbanging," Goldman said. "Look: Here's some alternatives and they're not
cheesy or corny; they're based on real kids that have found positive
alternatives."
Goldman wants kids to connect with the teens in the video and say, "I can do
that too."
"What I want to be different about this is the positive intervention rather
than a preachy, negative one," she said.
The program, now in postproduction, will be screened at Warehouse 21 in late
August. It will be presented in Santa Fe and Capital high school health
classes sometime during the fall semester.
Martin Burch is a 2006 graduate of Santa Fe High School.
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