Breathe Youth Fest 2023
Breathe Youth Fest Blog
Feb 2023
A great time was had by all at the 2023 Breathe Youth Fest and 9th Annual PSA Contest held on January 27, 2023. Huge thanks to the Sacramento Association of Realtors for their generous donation of their fantastic new event space, the Mack Powell Event Center. With state of the art lighting and audio/visual capabilities, this fresh space can accommodate groups large and small. Be sure to check it out when looking for a centrally located venue!
For decades, BREATHE has brought attention to tobacco’s influence on the big screen. Now with streaming services and the proliferation of social media, audiences are easily reached by the devices in their pockets. To help combat the unhealthy messages the tobacco industry purposefully generates, BREATHE has held an annual event to celebrate artists and influencers that don’t use tobacco to depict characters and their personalities. In years past, these events would take the form of a mock Oscar’s award ceremony. Youth volunteers would dress up, arrive by limo, walk a red carpet and then serve as hosts and presenters of an awards ceremony for movies depicting tobacco and those that were tobacco free.
In 2013, BREATHE launched a Public Service Announcement (PSA) Contest, encouraging middle and high school students to submit short videos on the harmful effects of tobacco. Students could work in teams, pairs or individually to address some of the many negative effects of tobacco. Topics for focus include: Tobacco and the Environment, The Vaping Epidemic/Flavored Tobacco, Tobacco as a Health Equity/Social Justice Issue, and Tobacco-Related Diseases. Videos are reviewed by a panel verifying that they met the minimum requirements (length, content, appropriateness) and are ranked to determine first, second and third places in both a middle school and high school category. This year, we were pleased to be able to expand the high school category to include both an ‘acted’ and an ‘animated’ category, resulting in nine winners overall! Thank you to BREATHE’s Board of Directors for sponsoring the prize money for our young winners. Winning videos can be viewed on our website: www.sacbreathe.org/psa-2
The Breathe Youth Fest was a fast paced two hour event run by our Youth Advisory Board (YAB). Attendees were able to take polaroid photos at a photo booth and then create a scrap book page to commemorate the event. Stress-relieving coloring pages, life size scrabble and lots of snacks were available to enjoy before the program began. The evening kicked off with YAB introductions and was followed by an icebreaker filling in BINGO squares, a Jeopardy-style game containing tobacco-themed answers and an opportunity to make a tobacco-free pledge. The announcement and playing of the PSAs was definitely a highlight with many of the winners in attendance. Congratulations to all of the 2023 winners! Rounding out the evening was a trivia game to guess the movie or tv show that went with the music or theme song played and then finally a drawing to give away over 25 raffle prizes.
We look forward to sharing an evening of fun and tobacco control education with our region’s youth next year! Stay tuned for more details on how to submit a PSA and attend this event.