By Josephine Cooper and Carl Lakari
Last month, we featured a blog from Project AWARE Coordinator, Carl Lakari. This month, we are featuring a letter from one of their youth volunteers, Josephine Cooper.
I want to share with you a letter from one grateful youth volunteer. Read it, find inspiration, share it with your networks … and please remember the potential that exists in our youth. Carl Lakari, Project AWARE Coordinator
Letter from Josephine Cooper, Age 15, Saco, Maine
Project AWARE is an organization that encourages young people to lead in their communities. For me it has done just that. When I joined the Project AWARE Players in 2005 it gave me a chance to use my creativity to better myself and others around me. I am given the opportunity to speak to young people and adults alike, about the importance of an alcohol and drug free lifestyle, and encourage natural highs, and making a difference.
This is my fifth year being a part of the Project AWARE Players. When I was in the sixth grade, I became the director of the Project AWARE Player Juniors. As a sixth grade student I was given the opportunity to write skits pertaining to issues that I was concerned about. Then, present them to students and adults in a creative and fun way. Throughout middle school, I continued to gain self-confidence and a feeling of leadership through the Project AWARE Players, which now serves to my benefit every day of my high school, and one-day adult life. I now provide artistic direction for the Project AWARE Players.
In the summer of 2008, an opportunity arose, which has proved one of the most influential and unexpected of my life. I attended the Project AWARE Summer Film Institute. There, I was able to use my love for film to make more of a difference than I would have ever dreamed. Another Project AWARE Players member and I created a one-minute PSA about the importance of parent role modeling. This is a topic, which affects everyone’s life, and isn’t sufficiently discussed. Several months after the PSA premiered, my partner and I were confronted with a proposition from Project AWARE, to make our PSA into a movie! After a year of planning, writing, casting, and a lot of learning, the shoot for the 30-minute film began. For a week and a half I, a high school student, got the opportunity of a professional director. I worked with a professional camera crew, and professional actors. Everything I had ever learned about leadership was put to the test. I blocked scenes, called action, and watched the magic of film come to life on the monitor.
Never before have I felt so proud. Not only did I get to direct, but I got to act as well, and prepare for the career I hope to someday pursue. I can’t think of a better experience than to be given the chance to not only wear the director’s hat, but that of a writer, producer, and actor as well. It was an exhilarating process, and amazing hands on experience. I became a leader of an entire film operation, all ultimately geared towards making a difference about an issue I feel is of great importance, while being supported by Project AWARE.
Not only have I learned a remarkable amount, and had such great opportunities from being a member of the Project AWARE Players, but I have also met some of the greatest people I could ever hope to encounter in one lifetime. Project AWARE has supplied me, since I was young, with role models. I have grown up with people to encourage me to make a difference, and follow whatever dreams I may have. Also, people to show me the importance of a drug and alcohol free life, and to teach me that there are so many wonderful things out there to spend my precious time doing, rather than wasting it with unhealthy decisions. To this day, I think back on all of the amazing people I would have never met without Project AWARE and the Players.
How many teenagers have the opportunity to speak to a room full of organization heads, and school faculty, about the issues they feel important? How many young people are given the chance to educate children about the importance of healthy choices? How many people in general learn to really be a leader, and express themselves in a creative and meaningful way? Thanks to Project AWARE, these are all things I can proudly say, I have done.
Josephine is one of many youth “volunteers” at Project AWARE .
Carl Lakari is the Project Aware Coordinator and a guest blogger.
