SADD

Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD)
Nationwide

Students Against Destructive Decisions is a nationwide organization all about “teens helping teens make positive decisions.” With 350,000 students composing 10,000 chapters across the country, SADD works with other non-profit organizations to spread awareness of a variety of destructive decisions such as reckless teen driving, suicide, drug use, tobacco use and eating disorders.

Recently named SADD National Student of the Year, Ricky Birt, 18, of New Carlisle, Ohio, has been involved in SADD for four years. “We work through teens at various places across the country to really promote a positive lifestyle in terms of no use of substances and to help teens have more power to make a difference,” he said.

What project are you currently working on?

At the state level, I work with almost 500 chapters here in Ohio, and we’re actually launching a campaign in November called “Lights for Life.” Drivers will drive with their headlights on at the end of November as a pledge to be responsible drivers each time they take the wheel. And then what we do is we created kits that give different activities to do throughout the week and empower students to connect with their local law enforcement, get them on board, as well as contact local elected officials to get proclamations and work through their local community to get the message out.

How did you get involved with SADD?

When I was in high school, I thought there were a lot of different ways to get involved. There was choir and all these groups, but when I came to the SADD table I saw something very unique. It wasn’t a national organization telling students what to do in a specific agenda, as I find in a lot of other organizations, it was a group of teenagers from my high school who were really concerned about their friends and the decisions they were making. I saw that they were trying to prevent drunk driving, drug use, tobacco usage, things that we had seen in our community where people had made those decisions to use and the dangerous consequences that came about. I felt through SADD I could actually make a real difference to my friends and I could really help others make positive choices and help, in the end, to save their lives.

What do you consider SADD’s biggest success?

Fewer students are dying than ever before on the roadways of America because we’re relentless in our message that you should be responsible drivers when you take the wheel. But actually, probably the biggest success is when we get SADD students together and we ask them the same question that you asked me — Have you seen SADD make a difference in your life? — and overwhelmingly you see that SADD empowers students, not just to help their friends make better decisions, but they actually become stronger individuals because of their involvement in SADD.

Copyright 2009 Y-Press