Libra-teens Earn Madison County's Promise Mini Grant

The Canastota Libra-teen Group has recently been awarded a 2010 Madison County's  Promise, The Alliance for Youth Mini Grant in the amount of $200. The teens, who meet at the library once weekly during the regular academic year, will be working on a project geared towards bringing awareness to the goal of reducing substance abuse and building a safe and healthy community.


The teen’s project is entitled “The Power of Knowledge.” Each of the teens in the program plans to create a poster showing why knowledge is such an important issue in understanding the dangers of drugs and other substances. The teens hope to show that there are resources available at the Canastota Public Library to educate both teens and their parents about drug and substance abuse issues. The posters will be on display at the library’s Lawson Community Room during the month of December 2010 for public viewing. The teens also plan to write a script for a sixty second video as well as sixty and thirty second public service announcements for local radio stations to air. The video will be posted on YouTube, the library’s website and Facebook site as well as on PAC99. The radio commercials will be given to the local radio station, WMCR for use. The scripts and commercials will be created in the fall.

“We hope that the community will look at the library as a resource to find information about drug, alcohol and other substance abuse,” said Abby, one of teens working on the project. She also noted that the group hopes that other teens will find the library to be a safe and fun place where they can hang out with friends.

There are about fifteen members of the group who will participate in this project. The library will provide a safe meeting place, resources, various supplies needed and a team leader for the project. Madison County’s Promise mini-grant will allow the teens to purchase supplies needed for poster creation and video creation.

The teens will be working on this project during September, October and November. For additional information regarding the Canastota Libra-teens, please contact Beth Totten at the library. You can also visit the library’s website at www.canastotalibrary.org. For information regarding Madison County’s Promise, The Alliance for Youth, contact Sarah Johnson, Coordinator for the program or visit www.madisoncountynypromise.org.