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Storytelling for Empowerment

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Storytelling for Empowerment is a school-based, bilingual (English and Spanish) intervention for teenagers at risk for substance abuse, HIV, and other problem behaviors due to living in impoverished communities with high availability of drugs and limited health care services. The program primarily targets Latino/Latina youth and uses cognitive decision-making, positive cultural identity (cultural empowerment), and resiliency models of prevention as its conceptual underpinnings. Storytelling for Empowerment aims to decrease alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use by identifying and reducing factors in the individual, family, school, peer group, neighborhood/community, and society/media that place youth at high risk for ATOD use, while enhancing factors that may strengthen youth resiliency and protect against ATOD use. The core components of the intervention include the Storytelling PowerBook and the Facilitator's Guide. The PowerBook is a series of activity workbooks that include the following sections: Knowledge Power: brain physiology, physical effects of drugs Skill Power: decision-making strategies, role-playing Personal Power: multicultural stories, symbol making Character Power: multicultural historical figures, character traits Culture Power: defining culture, bi-culture, subculture; cultural symbols Future Power: multicultural role models, choosing a role model, goal setting
Other available adaptations of the PowerBook include the (1) StoryBook for HIV, with sections on science, risk factors, relationships, and self-efficacy, and (2) Stories To Live or Die By: Inhalants, Meth, Ecstasy, which teaches facts and myths about methamphetamine, ecstasy, and club drugs.