Monadnock Youth Coalition May Updates

Hi everyone, if you are new to our website and want to learn about the Monadnock Youth Coalition, go no further.  In this article we will give you a quick update about what we have done over the past few months.

The Monadnock Youth Coalition attended a seminar put on by Javier Sanchez called From this Moment on.  This presentation was hosted by a coalition similar to ours called Kansas Youth Connect.  This presentation was focused toward youth.  It was quite engaging with Mr. Sanchez including art and music into his presentation.  He even went so far as to compare his looks to Drake which got a laugh out of some of our members.  One of the main takeaways from his presentation was his metaphor of life being like a car.  You can’t drive a car looking backwards and similarly you can’t live your life looking back towards your past.  I think this really hit home with a lot of people.  He also mentioned that one of his personal mottos was to try to leave every person that he met better than when he met them.  If we would all strive to do this, imagine what the world would be like!  While we enjoyed this presentation we didn’t stop there, we went on to host a Netflix Party Movie Night.

Since the stay at home order has been in effect in New Hampshire the constant thought in everyone’s minds has been how do we still stay engaged and have fun even though we can’t be near each other?  Netflix’s new Chrome extension Netflix Party offered us a perfect way to enjoy some down time together.  We all logged onto Netflix or Zoom one Friday night and kicked back to watch the fun family friendly movie Incredibles 2.  While this movie is a family favorite and rated PG, I couldn’t help but notice the use of alcohol in the film.  Several characters are seen sipping clearly alcoholic beverages to unwind several times.  This was so surprising to myself since this movie is marked as family friendly.  It makes me wonder what other subliminal messages are being slipped into children’s movies under our noses.  Even though this was alarming we still enjoyed watching the movie together and unwinding.

One event that really seemed to bring some joy to members was our Rock your Resilience contest.  This contest was aimed at youth from the towns of Keene and Swanzey painting rocks that had messages of positivity on them and placing them in outdoor places where people could exercise and enjoy nature safely without being at risk.  There were so many lovely submissions that really brought hope into the hearts of the YMCA staff that judged the contest.  Here are some of the submissions.

The winner of this contest ended up being Stella Parrelli, one of our youth group members.  She painted the rock you can see above with the word Peace on it.  What a simple but effective message to spread to people especially right now.  We wrapped up this contest feeling inspired and hopeful.  We continued on with more fun events by hosting a trivia and Kahoot event through Zoom.  We played Kahoot games based on Incredibles 2 and based on wild animals.  Chase Capron one of our youth group members even won one of the games, go Chase!

Finally we continued to keep our Facebook and Instagram accounts updated with current events relating to tobacco news and so many other things.  One post which was loved by many was a video in which you could follow along to a trauma sensitive yoga routine.  We also posted a toolkit for how parents can talk to their teens about nicotine and the harms it can bring to them.  That about wraps it up for what MYC has been up to.