Derrick Miller
DUNCAN — With the turn of a kaleidoscope, the visible image changes. Thursday and Friday it won’t be an image changing, but thoughts and actions.
Stephens County Youth Services will have its 19th annual Kaleidoscope program for seventh-grade students throughout Stephens and Jefferson counties. The program is divided into two days at different schools from day to day.
More than 800 students attend the program each year. Kaleidoscope topics range from teen pregnancy to peer pressure. Students participate in sessions selected by their parents.
John Herdt, Youth Services director, said, “The numbers were up a little bit, but with the flu stuff, there’s no telling how many will attend. We are still expecting about 400 each day.”
The program started as a community venture, to show seventh-graders why it’s important to make the right decisions.
“They just wanted to do some kind of fair,” Herdt said.
Youth Services has been involved from the first year, but Kaleidoscope fell under the umbrella of several organizations. Herdt said this changed in the second year.
“It wasn’t until the second year that Youth Services started ramrodding it,” Herdt said. “It was still the same volunteers, it just became a Youth Service thing.”
Much of the program has been pushed by a volunteer base.
“We’re always in need of volunteers,” Herdt said. “We need people to help with the sessions.”
Volunteers can help between 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Thursday and/or Friday. Herdt said more volunteers helps the program run more smoothly.
Herdt said many of the volunteers have been involved in the program for quite a while. This helps when it comes to planning because everyone knows what needs to be done.
“It’s been a lot of years that we’ve been doing this,” Herdt said.
Herdt said the program finds ways of presenting an array of information to the students. For instance, there will be a ventriloquist who will teach the seventh-graders about peer pressure.
Every year, there is a T-shirt illustration competition. The seventh-graders design them and one is selected for the T-shirt for that year’s program. The winner isn’t revealed until the program.
