Vision
Mobilized youth passionate about promoting health and resiliency among their peers.
Mission
Empowering teens to impact their school and community in a positive way by reducing substance use and promoting health, hope, and connection.
Youth Peer Leadership
STAND empowers young people to promote positivity and healthy decision-making among their peers, creating a social network for good.
Prevention Education
Youth are the most effective agent of change when it comes to impacting other youth. STAND encourages and builds up youth peer leaders that create prevention messaging that is relevant to their generation.
Mental Health Promotion
STAND youth promote positive mental health by engaging their peers in campaigns on practicing gratefulness, connecting to others, leaning into your strengths, and developing resilience and grit.
How STAND Works
STAND’s unique prevention model is rooted in prevention science and builds in protective factors that buffer kids from risk. Young people involved with STAND know that they are valuable contributors to social change and are empowered to lean into their strengths to impact the world around them. School and community leaders who work with the teens model healthy beliefs and clear standards, providing support as they harness young people’s social influence. STAND leaders have the capacity to impact thousands through their positive leadership, prevention education, and student-led and designed projects that meet community needs.
Youth Substance Use
Substance use among youth has increased in recent years. Through STAND, youth are taking action to stop that increase in their communities. Teens are equipped with skills and prevention best-practices to make the biggest impact in their own peer population. Communities with STAND have seen a decrease in reported 30-day alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drug use among teens (Kansas Communities That Care 2021 Data).
Prevention and Mental Health Education
By providing the tools and skills necessary to impact their peers, students take an active role in changing the culture of their schools and communities. Through a social norms approach, students are taught to think differently about peer pressure and encouraged to take a stand themselves. High school leaders educate younger students, adding positive peer modeling, starting the messages at a younger age to prevent initial use. Incorporating upstream mindset shifts and optimistic thinking, students teach one another to shift to an internal focus of control. Mental health is impacted as students are empowered to boost one another, serve one another, and create a healthier environment for all.
Youth Leadership and Advocacy
Youth are given the rein’s through STAND’s youth-led structure. Students are guided by adults to identify issues, examine root causes, and come up with effective and creative actions to address those issues. Through action planning and implementation, local and state advocacy, and even adult education, STAND leaders prove that youth in every community have a role and a voice. By handing the leadership over to the youth themselves, students become empowered as they see that they can have a real and lasting impact in the world around them.
Building Protection
Student leaders engaged in STAND are impacted through protection building of adults. By providing them with skills, opportunities, and recognition, adults build a hedge of protection from not only substances, but other negative or unhealthy behaviors. Students learn to build resilience and grit, experience civic engagement through service, and gain valuable community relationships and connection with supportive leaders.
Implementation
STAND’s unique and flexible structure lends itself to be implemented with any group of youth. Any organization or group, whether community-based, faith-based, school-based, or other, can empower youth to create change in the world around them through STAND.
STAND has changed my view on life completely. I’ve become a much better leader and a mentor to those around me.
Tristan Wedd, STAND Member
Recognition and Awards
The STAND program has received attention from the Drug Free Communities National Evaluation team and from the Office of National Drug Control Policy due to the prove positive impact that youth have had on their communities. Three years in a row, STAND youth leaders received the Kansas Prevention Youth Leadership award for their work in prevention substance use in their communities. In 2019, the STAND program received the Kansas Prevention Education Award for their educational impact, sharing prevention education with over 2,200 individuals. The Kansas Youth Prevention Leadership Award has been awarded to STAND leaders not just in 2020, but in 2019 and 2019 as well.
Interested in starting a STAND Team?
Mirror, Inc STAND staff would love to discuss creating a STAND team in your community.