Students from Comet Bay College, Secret Harbour, have been busy film making and marketing to educate other young people about the consequences of using illegal drugs. The new innovative project called Students Advising Youth (S.A.Y) was recently launched by the Peel Crime prevention and diversity unit in conjunction with established partners, Murdoch University, local drug action groups inc. (LDAG) and School Drug Education & Road Aware (SDERA).
Film making, guerrilla marketing and social media are all weapons of choice that Peel Youth are deploying in the quest to educate other young people in the State about the dangers and consequences of using illegal or synthetic drugs, as part of the new innovative Students Advising Youth (S.A.Y) project recently launched by the Peel crime prevention and diversity unit and partners.
The S.A.Y. project is curriculum based with a strong emphasis on research, marketing and communication by the participants. All valuable skills the students will call upon during their future career paths. As part of the project students have to research their anti-drug topic, which is an anti-drug theme and then compile at short TV style advert highlighting why illegal and synthetic drugs have no place in our community. The student’s films are then uploaded onto YouTube and communicated through out social media. The participants and partner agencies play an active part in marketing their films to youth everywhere. The top 10 films with the most YouTube ‘hits’ over a predetermined period then make it to the grand final. All finalists will be professionally judged by an expert in the media industry. Several winners will then get the chance to win a work experience placement in the media sector.
Senior Constable Tam McKeown who created the S.A.Y. project said “Young people are often reluctant to take onboard the advice delivered to them by adults, whether it is about the use of illegal drugs, road safety or any other community safety topic. Many young people perceive this type of educational medium to be ‘preaching’ in nature. The S.A.Y. project aims to harness the youth enthusiasm and creativity to empower them to be the educators of other youth. He also said “All participating students gained a strong anti-drug education during the research component of the project. The students will actively promote and market their anti-drug films through main stream media such as doing radio interviews etc, as well as utilising social media where they and their fellow youth do most of their social networking. We have high hopes that this project will benchmark itself and hopefully be open to all high schools students to participate in as a statewide project in the near future”.
See Short Films HERE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHywrMyox0&list=PLKM6pfyI0drWn_u8HRFJFjS-X8hfu_VAL