On Wednesday July 7th 2010, Tynaya, Emily, and I were interviewed by four teens from the ABCD’s S.N.A.P. program called “Young Women for a Better Tomorrow”. These girls asked us questions about what we do as youth advisors, how we became interested in the position, and how we felt our program impacted other young women, among other things. I said that I believe that the CYWH youth advisors are role models and the program itself has a positive impact on young women. Every big change has to start small. Therefore, I feel that as long as we are reaching out to young women in the community and informing them about different health topics, we are already making a difference. Perhaps at that moment they don’t understand or believe what we were saying, but I’m sure that our ideas will be instilled in them and they will subconsciously think about them later. Ty and Emily agreed with me that just as we tell our friends what we have learned (about certain health facts), our friends will tell their friends, and soon the information will spread to many more young women. So the bottom line is that yes, the CYWH definitely has a positive impact on young girls, although we may not necessarily see it immediately.

The S.N.A.P. girls are just beginning to write their newsletter and were looking for inspiration and ideas on how to start. Aside from blogging, we also write articles for our quarterly newsletter. So we have a good amount of experience as to how to brainstorm about a topic and start an article. When answering this question we realized that we all have our own way of writing and also our own unique way of approaching a topic that we decide to write about. For instance, I tend to research my topic and then write everything that’s on my mind about it, whether I have a particular focus or not. After I write my ideas I seem to find my focus and then revise the content to form complete sentences and paragraphs. This may or may not work for you, but like they say, practice makes perfect. Once you start writing on a regular basis you will find out what works for you.

-Erica