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Prairie du Chien student to serve on statewide youth board
Kyle Picha poses with a display he made featuring some of the ingredients found in cigarettes, like toilet bowl cleaner and rat poison.
Kyle Picha will be one of 20 youth throughout Wisconsin on the Youth Advisory Board for FACT, or Fighting Against Corporate Tobacco.
FACT was developed and defined by youth at a state tobacco summit in 2001. Since then, its membership has expanded to include more than 6,000 Wisconsin teens.
Picha will serve on the board for one year. The board provides youth input into the initiative, plans and organizes events, and provides peer support for teens around the state involved in tobacco prevention.
Past Crawford County students to serve on the F.A.C.T. Board included 2005 Seneca graduate Elliot Stevenson and 2005 Prairie du Chien graduate Amanda Gregory.
Picha is currently involved in tobacco prevention efforts locally. He serves on the Youth Leadership Committee (YLC) of Crawford Abuse Resistance Effort (C.A.R.E.), a community-based service of Prairie du Chien Memorial Hospital. His tobacco prevention efforts have included local leadership trainings, such as IM Life and “All Nighter 2006,” and organizing a dance that included tobacco awareness activities.
Picha also volunteered a few days each week this summer to work in the C.A.R.E. office, helping staff with office tasks, website management, and program planning.
Picha and three other Prairie du Chien youth recently attended a FACT summit, held at the Wisconsin Lion’s Camp in March 2005. Picha, Lacy Kruel, Rianne Cavage, and Tabitha Klema attended the weekend-long training.
“FACT takes a unique approach to prevention,” says Mary Sprosty, Prevention Specialist for C.A.R.E. “It does not focus on all the reasons youth shouldn’t smoke. Instead, it addresses how the tobacco companies target youth and the marketing practices they use to bait middle school and high school students into smoking.” Students learn about front groups, lobbying practices, and other political realities of tobacco and other large industries.
FACT teaches students to think about and interpret the marketing messages they are bombarded with daily. “Students learn how they are targeted by tobacco companies, but I think the information can be applied to other choices in their lives. The same techniques use by tobacco companies are used by Nike and Mountain Dew to sell their products to teens. Students who participate in this program are acquiring media literacy skills and learning to make better consumer decisions," Sprosty says.
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