AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF)- Local organizations give back to youth by equipping them with life skills.
“I’m very thankful for the workshop and I’m glad that they are doing something like this– especially for the area– ‘cause right now you see a lot of teens or younger people dying almost, at least like every week or every month, really, from gun violence or drugs,” Senior at Lucy Craft Laney high school Amari Lampkin said.
103 years after its founding, the Eta Zeta Theta Chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. tackle serious issues impacting young people in the CSRA.
“Provide information to the youth in our community to help them make good choices that will affect them, now, as well as in the future,” Zeta Phi Beta member Latonia Evans said.
The workshop was split into five different rooms where the same messages were being shared for kids and teens beginning with knowing your rights and more.
“Drug usage and how it affects the community, suicide prevention, social media, college admission. The goal of today was to tailor our sessions to the age ranges of the students that are here today, so all of them were grouped by their age group and each of the presenters had the opportunity to speak on the level of the students that were in the session at the time,” Evans said.
Students were able to hear real-life scenarios of how things could be if they aren’t careful on the web and in the real world.
“Rooms number one and three really stuck out to me. Room number one was about gang violence and got the perspective of the people in the law enforcement and room number three was about social media presence,” Senior at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School Sophia Williams said.
And with some students being high school seniors, they’re already looking to what’s ahead.
“Social media, just be careful about what you post ‘cause like what you post can affect like jobs, scholarships, colleges can look at that too,” Lampkin said.
Members of Zeta Phi Beta say they want students to soak up the information they learned and use that as a start to a brighter future.
“Realizing that as they go on and they make choices and as they become young adults, that they will make some mistakes, but they have the support. And we want to make sure that we connect them with people in the community that they can reach out with– that they can reach out to for mentor-ship,” Evans said.