Kalamazoo Task Force on Substance Abuse Smart Summer 2009 question campaign aimed at helping parents, kids

Posted by Aaron Aupperlee | Kalamazoo Gazette September 14, 2009 09:44AM

PORTAGE -- Simone Snyder sent out nearly 5,000 e-mail messages during this summer's Kalamazoo Task Force on Substance Abuse Smart Summer 2009 campaign.

The Youth Development Coordinator for KYDNet mass e-mailed the campaign's weekly questions for parents to the organization's 350-plus mailing list each week.

"As soon as the (e-mail) would go out, people would come back and say, "This is great,'" Snyder said.

During the summer campaign, businesses and organizations, like the Irving S. Glimore Foundation-funded youth development initiative KYDNet, promoted 14 questions developed by the task force geared toward getting parents more involved with their children's lives. The Kalamazoo Gazette ran the questions each week inside Monday's papers.

The questions dealt with serious issues facing youth, teens and young adults, from drinking to prescription drug abuse to goals for the future, Snyder said. What made the campaign a success in her eyes was the frank and easy-to-understand nature of the questions and a three-word follow-up question included with each: "Are you sure?"
"When you work with kids, it's easy to get a question answered the way we, the adult, want it answered," she said, adding the real work begins when the true answer is counter to what the adults want.

To better learn the effect the campaign had on parents in the community, the task force plans to distribute a survey in the coming weeks to parents and organizations involved. The survey will ask specifically whether the materials and questions provided by the task force were helpful and how the campaign can improve next year, said Jenny Jordan, task force coordinator.

"What we're really trying to get at is was there any behavior change as an outcome from this," Jordan said.

Jordan said the task force started the summer without knowing how much the community would participate in the campaign. Throughout the summer, however, more and more businesses and organizations signed up to hang posters, send out e-mail blasts and hand out tip sheets for parents. By the end of the summer, 35 different businesses or organizations, ranging from libraries to restaurants, from courthouses to churches, participated.

"Obviously, we were thrilled to have that big of response," Jordan said.

Jordan said the results of the survey will play a big role in what the program will look like next summer, but she expects a similar campaign.

Contact Aaron Aupperlee at aaupperlee@kalamazoogazette.com or (269) 388-8576.