The Partnership for a Drug-Free America is a nonprofit organization that unites parents, renowned scientists and communications professionals to help families raise healthy children.
Goal
To develop The Partnership's first youth focused drug abuse education and reduction program.
Challenge
Creating a youth-targeted program designed to educate young people about the realities and consequences of substance abuse without being "preachy". A key challenge was to encourage youth to think more introspectively about their own behavior, motivate them to take a more proactive interest in the behaviors of their friends, and to open up and talk about issues related to drug use and abuse.
Solution
An immersive educational program targeting tweens and teens of all learning styles.
Immersive Execution
The Partnership's vision when contracting with Premise was to create a spirited, youth-targeted version of the successful Meth360 presentation geared toward adults. The new youth program would tie-in with www.checkyourself.com as the online go-to resource. Checkyourself is a place for young people to think in a focused way about their relationship with drugs and alcohol, and to consider whether their substance use may be turning into a problem. To achieve the goal, we developed the WRECKED concept and theme based on a simple premise: consider checking yourself and your friends, or risk getting wrecked. To decide the WRECKED name, we empowered over 300 of the Premise observers youth network to determine a name that resonated with the target audience and would fit with checkyourself.com. The "ED" highlights the educational focus; this is helpful for the program, as it is hosted at a wide range of private and public community organizations.
Evolving the original vision and creating an engaging three-part program experience was our strategy. The three parts include; a video presentation, interactive card game, and a group discussion. We partnered with A & E network's Intervention TV show and produced a short 10 minute video segment designed to get the audience thinking about risk factors and consequences of drug use. While the video is designed to set up the bigger picture, the role-playing card game fosters peer-to-peer discussion, which allows the audience to play out scenarios from their own viewpoint. The game is an immersive experience that helps young people better identify and understand the behaviors and risk factors related to substance abuse in staged, yet often times real, situations. As the game ends, the facilitator conducts an open Q & A and invites the audience to visit the checkyourself.com site.
In order to make the program turnkey for The Partnership's nationwide network of facilitators, we created a complete step-by-step program guidebook.
Impact
The WRECKED branding and credible association with A & E's Intervention TV show resonates with young people across a diverse array of cultures. The three-part program strategy appeals to the widest youth demographic reach, because the immersive experience reaches all learning styles. Bottom line, WRECKED gets young people to open up and talk about drugs, a subject they are traditionally not comfortable discussing.
