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A story of Local Response by Josianne from Redon
I hosted a youth group at a local mission. This is an association for young people with problems that helps them to find work and training. In general, young people do not have confidence in themselves and they really need to have their confidence restored.
When we were there, we asked them to do something that would improve their health. Many of these young people are struggling with problems such as suicides, smoking and sexually transmitted diseases.
On television, there are a lot of commercials on these topics made by adults. We felt that they would be better if they were made by young people. They would use the right words and their message would come across better.
When they were working in a closed room, they would smoke a lot and it would be impossible to breathe in the room. But we thought that we would let them smoke because it was their health and if they were going to promote health it would be much better if it started with them.
After a week, they decided that they would not smoke in the room, and they stopped. We were very pleased and they were proud of themselves. They still smoked but only during breaks.
Finally, they made sketches about driving when drunk and the need to use condoms. They also did one dealing with nutrition recommending a full breakfast to other young people. This has given them confidence and they were very proud of what they had done.
“When we gave people the chance to devote themselves to something, to lead a project, they gained confidence.”
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