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Community Promise

05-04-2016_1143_298.jpgCommunity PROMISE is all about making positive changes in our own community and helping teens play safer. Groups meet once a week and run for about 1-1 ½ hours. There’s 8 sessions for each group. To find out where we’re running PROMISE groups currently so you can join, check out our Map.

There are two different kinds of Community PROMISE groups:

Storyteller

The storyteller group creates projects—videos, cartoons, games, musics, spoken-work, w/e—that have positive messages for other teens. The projects are based on true stories of ways that teens made changes to reduce their risks and the reasons why. The stories, “iStories,” might be about testing, talking to a partner about using a condom, refusing drugs/alcohol, getting information, preventing pregnancy, etc. Once the group decides what kind of project we want to work on, the adults and Youth Advocates teach us the skills needed for our projects: storyboarding, videography, photography, music creation, cartooning, etc. Then we create our “iStory” projects to share with our friends, family, and peers on line and/or in person. We keep it real with our stories, so sometimes there's swear words and slang included, but the stories are true and real, so we keep it real when we're working on the projects.

Youth Advocates

05-04-2016_1143_729.jpgYouth Advocates are teens who help out in a lot of ways.  We’re the heart and soul of Real Talk!  Here’s what we do:

  • Get those “iStories” out to the communities where we live. We tell all our friends and families online and in person to go watch our videos, listen to our music, read our stories or cartoons, or check us out on our Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr pages. Sometime we post the stories in places where people might read them—like on the stalls in the bathrooms at school or at a local store.
  • Help run the Real Talk program by:
    • Posting on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Snapchat
    • Making decisions about Real Talk programs, projects, w/e
    • Sitting on the Community Advisory Boards
    • Running the tables at community events to tell other teens how to get involved
    • Telling teens about getting HIV/STI tested with Real Talk— FOR FREE (and people who get tested with us get a free movie ticket!)
    • Judging Contests. Sometimes we review YOUR Videos or YOUR Music and decide which ones are the best. Then we give out the prizes!
    • Handing out lots and lots and lots of condoms. Not just any condoms
      • Lollipop condoms
      • Glow-in-the-Dark condoms
      • Condom Beads
      • Female Condoms
      • And of course, Magnums©
  • Tech Group: We are the GENIUSES behind this website.  We take the pictures, make some of the videos, create the pages, do the research, w/e needs to be done on this website, we do it!  And we get paid to do all this work.  And we do most of the posting on the social media sites, edit video projects, add new stuff all the time.  Plus we get paid to do this when we meet twice a week. 

We get all kinds of incentives for working on the Real Talk projects, running the outreach tables, and helping with groups. Incentives can be small, like coupons for ice cream cones or burgers, to bigger prizes like $10 Visa© cards.