Watch: Texas Middle Schoolers Create Powerful Teen Dating Violence PSA
A group of middle school girls in East Texas decided that, when it comes to teen dating violence, they were going to take matters into their own hands — and then some.
The young women created a public service announcement (PSA) that has garnered attention from higher-ups in the Texas state government, who have asked the girls to consult on new legislation involving how public schools in the state should educate and discipline around teen dating violence. The teens raised the money to air their PSA on a local television channel by running a haunted house in their community.
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“We’ve never had problems with it, we don’t even have boyfriends,” said Madi Canfield in an interview with Jezebel, “But we see it happen every day in our school and we think that, since we’re their age, we can relate to them the most. And we could get the message across better.”
The young women are all participants in Destination Imagination’s Challenge Program, which encourages innovation and creative learning by having teams of students nationwide design solutions for problems that they independently identify.
The students are now also involved with the Texas Advocacy Project to continue to pursue their work to raise awareness about teen dating violence and provide support for survivors — and lobby for better legislation around this issue. “At first we just wanted to spread the word and educate people about the problem and how big of a problem it was,” Ashlynn Elgass explained to Jezebel, “We joined with Texas Advocacy Project and the project’s just grown and grown, way bigger than we would ever expect it would. Our main goal now, with everything that we’ve been doing, is that we’re trying to create a task force to come together and look at and evaluate this bill and find the most effective way to implement it into our schools. What we know that can actually happen, or the most promise we can get, is for someone to actually evaluate the law because it hasn’t been enforced.I think the farther we go, the more people will, like, understand and the more people will want to be educated, other than just in Texas.”
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And while the young women are now involved in helping the Texas Council on Family Violence develop a new state law to address teen dating violence in schools, they’ve learned more than just how to help others — they’ve learned how to help themselves.
Canfield says that throughout the entire experience — from Destination Imagination to the Texas State House — “I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned stuff like that, and that you need to do what’s best for you, no matter what the other person says. And that’s pretty much the biggest thing I’ve learned. I’m not really like, when I work in groups, I pretty much state my opinion, but if somebody doesn’t really approve of it, then I’ll just kind of back off. So it’s kind of taught me to stand up for myself. And it’ll be a big help when we start dating.”
