All of our youth programs focus on developing healthy lifestyles, making good choices and developing good communication skills impacting the participants choices related to smoking and the effects of second-hand smoke. These skills are applicable to all aspects of life including good study habits, healthy family relationships, strong leadership skills and a healthy life.
Our Hope for Youth Poetry Program strives to offer a wide-variety of experiences to all of the participants. Currently, the participants in our Hope for Youth Poetry Program are engaged in an educational course twice a week, rooted in the theme of identity, and seeking to discover/re-discover creative writing as an expression of who we are.
The Seattle-King County Tobacco Prevention Program helped fund a training for these students on the harmful effects of smoking and second-hand smoke. Students wrote poems based on the material presented, as well as their own thoughts, feelings and historical relevance in relation to tobacco and it's use. A small panel of judges comprised of volunteers and staff selected three of the poems that best represented our effort to educate the youth on the harmful effects of smoking and second-hand smoke. These poems will be presented to other students, parents of the youth in the program and on our web page as represntative pieces of the youth's efforts. Here are those 3 poems:
Smoking will give you very bad breath.
Smoking will give you yellow teeth.
Smoking will give you bad lips.
Smoking will make you ugly.
Ugly as Beavis and Butthead.
Ugly like an old man.
Ugly like a dog.
So ugly that if a person sees you they will run away.
So ugly your face will break a window.
And one more thing.
Smoking will make your body heat up.
Jaime Miranda
Tobacco is bad.
Bad is tobacco.
Bad breath is tobacco.
Tobacco means trouble.
If you smoke your lungs will
look like a dead cow.
Tobacco is poison
Poison is death.
Death is smoking.
If you do tobacco you have bad breath.
Bad breath like a smelly butt,
Like stinky feet,
Like a pig’s butt,
Like rotten meat,
Like a giant fart.
And NOBODY will kiss you!
Melissa Mercado
Tobacco is so stupid.
Don’t smoke.
If you smoke you are going to die.
You will die just as if
you killed yourself
by drinking too much and crashing your car.
Or riding your bike in front of a bus.
Or being eaten by a crocodile.
You’ll be dead.
Don’t smoke.
If you do no one will be your friend
because you will smell nasty.
I don’t want to be close to you.
I don’t want to kiss you.
I don’t want to be your girlfriend.
I’m not going to talk to you.
I’m going to tell everyone that you smoke.
I’m going to go into the office at school
And grab the microphone.
I’ll yell.
“He’s smoking! He’s stinky! He’s going to die!
He won’t let me help him quit smoking!”
Don’t smoke.
If you stop I will like you.
If you stop I will talk to you.
I will love you if you stop smoking.
Hortencia Mercado