The Paragon Youth Led Program provides pre-professional performing artists and other concerned youth the opportunity to develop their craft while also enriching the community by creating and providing content that assists in the promotion of healthy, drug free lifestyles for urban youth. Students work in groups or individually to produce music. They are assisted by Dr. Anderson (2017-2019), Giscard Xavier, and other Fort Hayes staff with song development and arrangement. The content is centered around a social issue important to them.
Staff helps the students get a better understanding of the content area of their music. So if their song explores depression, they provide the songwriter and the overall group with education about depression Youth Led Prevention (YLP) that is centered on SAMHSA’s SPF and designed to work with youth and allow their projects to communicate healthy peer driven drug free messages.
To open the Paragon Project VOL 4 Add-a-Lesson Discussion Guide and Lyric Book, click the image above
Check out more information about the Vol 4: Add-a-Lesson project on the Paragon Project Website
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The YLP program develops youth leadership to create positive change and empower others toward healthy lifestyles. Through programming, youth are able to develop self-esteem, a sense of community responsibility, effective communication, technical/financial capacity, and activism. Youth use an environmental prevention approach working with various media forums, community leaders, businesses and schools to create or strengthen protective factors. Through the performances, students learned to speak about their music, how it impacts their peers, what they have learned about the topic since, and what can be done to improve the lives of other youth dealing with similar issues.
