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Program Seeks to Help Teenagers Make Right Choices

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Times Staff Writer

After a day of world history, algebra and life science at Raymond A. Villa Fundamental Intermediate School in Santa Ana, seventh-grader Briana Byers takes another class -- this one voluntarily.

In front of 15 students, she giggles while she skips toward an instructor and faces her friend, Jessica Rico.

“Hey, Jessica, want to be a Blood?” Byers asks.

“No,” says Rico.

“I said to. You have to,” Byers says.

“I’m leaving,” says Rico. “I said no.”

The lines are part of a skit designed to encourage adolescents to think about choices and pressures of joining gangs, smoking and ditching school. The act is just one of the tools used in the Smart Choices program offered at 15 schools and community centers by Camp Fire USA Orange County Council.

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The program received $15,000 this year from the Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign, which raises money for nonprofit agencies in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Byers and the other seventh- and eighth-graders attend the free program once a week for eight weeks.

“I want them to help me with choices in my everyday life,” said Byers, 12, who wants to be a pediatrician. “People I hang out with sometimes seem to not care about education. They’re into the wrong things.”

The sessions focus on making decisions, setting goals, making and keeping friends, communication, dating and healthy relationships. The first class kicks off with a “values auction,” in which students bid for the values they believe in the most. The activity makes them realize what is most important to them, organizers said.

School officials say the program offers what they cannot.

“You are not afforded the time in class to teach things like this anymore. This is great. It lets kids see more than their own boundaries,” said Michael Clupper, the school’s after-school program coordinator.

Smart Choices began in 1997 because local council officials believed there was a need for more programs for middle-school children, said Nav Deol, Camp Fire director of programs. More than 3,000 children, most of them from at-risk or economically disadvantaged homes, have participated.

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Camp Fire targets students in Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Garden Grove. Camp Fire officials are concerned by teenage birthrates and gang affiliations. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 8% of births in Garden Grove are to teenage mothers, and 14% of all births in Santa Ana are to teenage mothers.

“The idea is to instill in them a sense of decision-making,” Deol said. “They end up with a better understanding of what is important to them and what they might want to do with their future.”

On a recent afternoon, Byers and her classmates wrote letters to themselves, outlining their long- and short-term goals. Byers wrote that she wanted to study, graduate from high school and be a pediatrician by age 25.

The instructor will mail her and her classmates the letters at the end of the school year, so the lessons learned in Smart Choices are not forgotten.

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