Martine Helou-Allen and RIZE Prevention are on a mission to empower teens to make healthy choices
Teen substance use is America’s largest, most preventable health crisis in America. 13 is the average age of first drug and alcohol use. 9 out of 10 addictions start in the teen years. Yet there are hardly any school-based drug prevention programs that reach adolescents at the crucial time of brain development when they are most susceptible to experimenting with or using drugs. “Just Say No” did not prove successful but RIZE is taking a different approach. By putting peers in the trenches they are empowering teens to make better choices.
RIZE Prevention, created by Martine Helou-Allen, believes the only way to stop teen drug use and substance use disorder is to provide effective drug prevention along with a support system to help teens grow up drug-free. iRIZE by RIZE Prevention is an evidence-based, comprehensive school-based drug prevention program delivered in the Upstate. They use their signature Break Through – Follow Through approach in middle schools, starting in the 6th grade.
Martine Helou-Allen is the founder and executive director of RIZE Prevention, a nonprofit in South Carolina that focuses on early prevention and intervention related to substance abuse and addiction. A graduate of Furman University, Martine’s passion for saving teens from the destructive and increasingly fatal consequences of drug use has enabled her to create innovative, evidence-based prevention programming that is delivered to middle schools, community organizations, and houses of worship. Prior to founding RIZE Prevention, Martine was the Community Relations Director at the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, an experience that sparked her vision to create and deliver her first drug prevention program “Anything But Free” to teens throughout the state. Martine currently lives in Greenville with her husband Scott and her two sons, Sami and Michael.
RIZE Prevention built its iRIZE program on the latest prevention and intervention science. They reach teens before their beliefs and attitudes about drugs have been formed. Treating teens with respect, they seek to empower them to resist drugs and make healthy choices by giving them knowledge about drug use, the skills to resist drug use, and the encouragement to exercise the power of positive choices.
https://www.rizeprevention.org/
The cornerstone of RIZE success is its Break Through – Follow Through approach. They ‘break through’ teens’ current perceptions to motivate a change in how they perceive drug use. They ‘follow through’ with the critical support needed to consistently make healthy lifestyle choices. The iRIZE approach encompasses three fundamental steps to empower teens to abstain from drug use and make healthy lifestyle choices:
Enlightening them about how unmet emotional needs or underlying issues and experiences, both past and present, affect their choices
Encouraging them to overcome and reverse destructive behaviors or unhealthy choice patterns
Empowering them by supporting their choices to live a drug-free life