With an intent to bring families closer together, Indian Crest Middle School hosted a wellness night on April 19 where families participated in physical activities and art classes while also enjoying dinner.
Indian Crest teacher Andrew Wilkinson believes that families spend less and less time together.
Due to families being independent from one another, it leads to more kids dealing with substance abuse and he has a plan to stop this issue.
“Wellness night is a night where we bring in families and feed them dinner,” Wilkinson said. “We have a yoga class, a cooking class and we have a therapeutic drummer coming out to teach classes, as well as a taekwondo instructor, a family PE class and many more things planned so families can come together.”
According to Wilkinson, this is one way to fight the issue of kids taking part in substance abuse; he just needs the families to participate.
“One of the biggest things that I know is that if we have youth involved in positive activities in the community such as sports, theater, working out or going to the Boys and Girls Club, they’re less likely in the future to take part in substance abuse,” Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson didn’t come up with the idea all by himself, as Indian Crest secretary Suzanne MacCarty is the co-creator and co-organizer of the event.
According to MacCarty, Wilkinson and she were tasked with running a Brain Campaign to bring attention to the issue of substance abuse.
“The idea behind the Brain Campaign is to raise awareness of youth substance abuse and prevention by sharing resources in the community that are there to help but do it in a fun way,” MacCarty said.
According to MacCarty, while bringing families in tandem with each other is the main purpose of the wellness night, awareness of substance abuse and how it affects youth is also a massive reason as to why they hosted the event.
“The intent is to bring families together for some fun and have them enjoy a free night out while learning a bit about youth substance abuse and prevention,” MacCarty said.