ITTA BENA, Miss.— In today’s fast-paced, social media-influenced world, teenagers face many issues. However, local teens received a dose of the information and support needed to help them make healthy life choices during a special event hosted at Mississippi Valley State University.
I Got You (IGU) Healthy Life Choices for Teens, an outreach program working to improve the mental health of students in Mississippi, visited MVSU’s campus Sept. 7 to educate, motivate, and inspire seventh and eighth-grade students from the Leflore County School District and the Carroll County School District.
Organizer Dr. Yolanda Jones, MVSU dean of student development, expressed excitement about MVSU’s partnership with the IGU program.
"When I initially agreed to coordinate this event at MVSU, I knew that it would be a great opportunity to bring students to our campus that live nearby who may have never visited our campus,” said Jones. “To have an opportunity to bring 200 to 300 potential students on our campus is one of the greatest recruitment opportunities to kick-start the fall 2018 academic year."
The event, hosted in the Walter Roberts Auditorium, began with high energy and fun with IGU project coordinator Frankie Johnson who captured the students’ attention using music, dance and a couple of outfit changes—from a country singer to Michael Jackson.
“We get on the kids’ level with fun to catch their attention, and then we talk about the serious things before we get back to having fun because that’s what it’s all about,” Johnson said.
The students in attendance received information concerning understanding mental illness, alcohol and drug prevention, healthy coping skills, bullying and cyberbullying, suicide prevention, self-injury and healthy relationships.
In addition, students also had the opportunity to drive go-carts outside using drunk driving simulators to learn first-hand about the effects of alcohol.
"The IGU program was designed to decrease behavior-related office discipline referrals in schools, in addition to reducing suicide, substance abuse, and dating violence. This program also increases the knowledge and the perception of mental illness, which many of our juveniles are facing on a daily basis," Jones explained.
Johnson, who is also the Director of Public Relations for Central Mississippi Residential Center, said interest in the program has increased tremendously over the last decade.
“We began the program ten years ago with about 300 youth as just a community project,” he said. “The first year was great, and we talked about one or two topics. It was a success the first time, and we felt we should add more topics the next year.”
Johnson said the program continued to grow and by the third year, roughly 1,000 kids were participating.
“It grew to the point where now we travel throughout the state, and we have about 6,000 kids that we see,” Johnson said.
Johnson said his vision is for IGU to continue to grow and have a positive impact on students.
“Nowadays, youth are fragile with so many devices that we didn’t have in our earlier stages of life, and many kids have not developed the coping skills to know that it’s okay to get help,” he said. “We get them to open up, and we talk to them about these issues and raise awareness for them. IGU is a prevention program, so it is designed to help youth take preventative measures so they won’t make choices they may regret later.”