It has been almost a decade since our community made headlines in The New York Times as home to the poorest US city. That report overlooked our most valuable resources – the people, their hopes, their dreams and their willingness to work hard to achieve them.
Using this measure, our community is rich by the thousands. Among these thousands are the teen heroes of Berks Teens Matter – our Youth Ambassadors (YAs). They come together weekly to learn about healthy relationships and sexuality. They use their skills and knowledge to educate their peers, create awareness campaigns, and inform BTM about the many challenges the youth of our community face every day on their way to becoming healthy successful adults.
A recent YA campaign, “Healthy Hearts,” raised awareness about Healthy Relationships. Over a 3-week period of time our YA teen heroes distributed 600 paper hearts to their peers at Reading High. During week one they handed out red ‘respect your partner’ hearts. In week two, blue ‘quality communication’ hearts were passed out. And, in the final week, they gave out purple hearts promoting ‘self-respect.’ All of the hearts were attached to a Health Resource Center information card. Morning announcements at RHS were also used to talk about healthy relationships and let students know they could take their “Healthy Heart” to the HRC if they wanted to talk about healthy relationships.
We are inspired by our YA teen heroes and are beginning to imagine how we can expand their campaigns beyond the walls of RHS, into the larger community. If you would like to get involved with helping to make this happen contact Berks Teens Matter @ 610-375-6523 or www.berksteensmatter.org ‘Contact Us.’
By Nadine Smet-Weiss