Positive Peer Influencer program has nearly quintupled since its inception three years ago
Kianna Griffin: Don't feel like you're alone because you're never alone.
Sherlisa Praylo: Yes, if you want to be an influencer, this is the way to do it.
Ken Slats: In a positive peer way. That's the PPI program through the Mediation Center of the Coastal Empire. This partnership with our school system has grown from around 60 PPI's mediators a few years ago, to this year's enrollment nearing 300.
Sherlisa Praylo: It shows you that there is going to be a change. There's a shift in our community of now, our young people having a voice and stepping up and saying, this is what we have going on. I have a program that I want to be a part of and another a program that I can kind of show my power and lend my voice.
Kianna Griffin: So it's really amazing just seeing that us high schoolers that we want to help out, we want to reach, we want to talk to the younger kids to let them know, like things are going to change, even though guess is ha, it gets better. You just got to keep pushing. You got to keep moving. And don't let nobody tear you down. Just believe in yourself that you will. You will always be able to do it.
Ken Slats: Positive Peer Influencers from our high schools trained to go into our middle schools and provide that bridge over rough waters.
Nylynn Brissett: It's really just a way. I feel like me and many of my other peers can extend our leadership experience, as well as educate the younger kids, because they will be in high school soon.
Ja'Mauri Williams: We're here to help. You know, middle schoolers who's coming to high school, you know, like, not be easily peer pressured into doing drugs and, you know, being easily influenced into other things that they really don't want to do.
Kianna Griffin: And you just never know what anybody is going through or where anybody faces the challenges that they go through when they wake up in the morning or sleep at night, because some kids, they don't go to sleep at night, they scared because the thoughts and everything that they have going through. So us been here to help them. It makes them more comfortable, like they're not alone and they have somebody for them.
Jill Cardenas: That's a main thing that we want to happen with the high school students when the influencers leave that room is that that child knows that there's someone that cares about them. You know, they're even told when you go to high school and you see me say hi.
Michael Sarhatt: The Mediation Center brought the tools to the table so that the kids can make better decisions. And how to make better decisions.
Ken Slats: It's creating a culture, one of positively influencing. Michael Sarhatt leads the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team. He's instrumental in the birth of this program. The underlying goal is to steer students away from the dangers of drugs.
Michael Grant: Most students, they don't open up to the adults how they do to their friends and their peers. So when you come to them as their age, as a teenager, a teenager, the teenager, they really open up more to you. They remember when I came into them and I spoke to them, and I taught them about fentanyl, and I taught them about all this different stuff. And they remember that and it sticks with them.
Michael Sarhatt: They're learning how to give a presentation and stand up. They're learning how to lead. They're learning how important civic duty is. I mean, the whole thing is I mean, it's a win for the high schools and win for the middle schools, and it's one for the country and the society because hopefully we're curbing that. That's only one part of the overall plan when you're attacking the opioid crisis.
Kianna Griffin: Because drugs is not good for you and messes up your mindset, it messes up everything about you. And you just don't want to be put in that predicament. Yes, we do get peer pressure to do it. But anything could kill you.
Nylynn Brissett: We truly care about the well-being of the younger kids and our generation. Many of us want to help and help educate the younger ones, because a lot of these issues are on the rise.
Ken Slats: A rise that our PPI's hope to stifle for success. For SCCPSS, I'm Ken Slats.