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Boardman Yes Fest teaches more than just saying “no”
By Bruce Walton
BOARDMAN
Paige Dill, a junior at Boardman High School, said Friday’s fourth annual Yes Fest really hit home for her.
She recalled the death of her 22-year-old cousin nearly two years ago from a drug overdose, and the almost indescribable grief she and her family felt losing him.
“When I found out, I was traumatized,” she said. “I was ... crying for about two weeks, and when I went to his funeral, I tried to hold it together but then I lost it, and I was an emotional wreck.”
To her, the anti-drug event is addressing a real and serious problem of substance-abuse among Mahoning Valley youths.
Yes Fest first started in response to three drug-related deaths of students in 2013. After their deaths, Anne Bott, the high-school’s assistant principal and main organizer of the event, said the school’s administrators brainstormed on ways to do more.
“We had never had a situation like that so close together, and we knew we had to do something different,” Bott said. “So we thought about all the years of kids going through the DARE [Drug Abuse Resistance Education] Program and saying ‘just say no,’ but we never told them what to say ‘yes’ to.”
The event first has more than 2,000 students from grades 12-7 attend an assembly in the auditorium throughout the day to listen to two speakers. They heard Heidi Riggs, a chief administrative officer of Alvis, a nonprofit human services agency for formerly incarcerated people; and then David Kohout, the founder of Talk is Cheap Inc., a nonprofit organization that builds character, confidence and hope in youths.
Riggs spent a lot of her career with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and the Secretary of State’s Office, with Attorney General Mike DeWine’s heroin unit. She spoke about how drug abuse doesn’t just affect your body but your life and the people around you. She lost her daughter, Marin, to a heroin overdose after multiple relapses in 2012.
Kohout spoke about making proactive and preventive decisions with a technique named after the Boardman Spartans, his alma mater. He calls it the Spartan SHIELD, which stands for Support, Honesty, Involvement, Excellence, Love and Determination.
The second step brought students to the gymnasium to talk at booths representing at least 60 valley nonprofit and community organizations that offer a variety of volunteer opportunities.
This way, Bott said, students can first learn and then find ways to help the community instead of just waiting until it’s too late.
“Absolutely say no to drugs, but say yes to something positive and make good choices,” she said.