Background

When Year 13 students at Queen Charlotte College in Picton discovered during a health day that all 23 of them were smokefree, they decided to let everyone know it!

In 2008, Amy Jansen, was an active member of the school's health committee and saw a great opportunity to promote the cause. The students formed a smokefree section of the health committee and decided to make a smokefree poster out of the Year 13 school photo.

Planning

Amy contacted the company that had taken their school photograph. They were very impressed with her idea and provided an electronic copy for free.

Once the students had the copy, they used Photoshop to add some graphics. They were assisted in producing the poster by friends and the school's computer teacher.

Although the students looked into the cost of printing the posters elsewhere, the cheapest option was to make them at school. The cost of printing and laminating was 30 cents per poster which was covered by the student council fund.

Implementation

The posters were distributed throughout Queen Charlotte College in classrooms, counselling rooms and recreational areas. They were also sent to other high schools in the area and displayed in Picton's ferry terminal and local shops.

The Queen Charlotte College Principal and Deputy Principal helped to promote the initiative by phoning the local paper which ran a feature on the school's initiative.

Evaluation

What worked well

The school's smokefree poster was an enormous success. The reaction from the other students was overwhelmingly positive, with some children telling the Year 13 students that they also disliked smoking. Amy believes the poster gave them more confidence to speak out about the issue.

The poster initiative could potentially be adapted to suit other schools as it was a role modelling scheme. Reactions to the poster reinforced the idea that when a group of seniors take on a particular viewpoint it provides positive role-modelling to the other youngsters in the school. The poster helped young students see that being smokefree can be something to be proud of.

What could have worked better

The initiative was quite spontaneous and may have benefited from a more thorough planning process. As the initiative was not planned in advance, the students had a limited amount of time to produce the poster. It was produced fairly late during the school year and may have had more impact if the school had had more time to distribute it more widely – and further promote it in the media.

However, Amy still feels the poster had a real impact on the Picton community.

"Lots of people were surprised that the whole of Year 13 was smokefree and it was nice to give them a bit of faith in teenagers again!"

More information

You can find out more about Queen Charlotte College's Year 13 smokefree initiative, by contacting Amy Jansen directly.