SMART Leaders

SMART Leaders is a 2-year booster program that follows from Stay SMART (for Skills, Mastery, And Resistance Training). Both are components of SMART Moves, a comprehensive drug and sexual activity prevention program offered through the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA). Stay SMART is a curriculum-based program for 13- to 15-year-olds that teaches a broad spectrum of social and personal competence skills to help youths identify and resist peer and other social pressures to smoke, drink, and engage in sexual activity. The program consists of 12 sessions: 1) gateway drugs, 2) decision-making, 3) advertising, 4) self-image and self-improvement, 5) coping with change, 6) coping with stress, 7) communication skills, 8) social skills: meeting and greeting people, 9) social skills: boy meets girl, 10) assertiveness, 11) relationships, and 12) life planning skills.
SMART Leaders reinforces the skills and knowledge learned during Stay SMART and encourages participants to stay involved in prevention activities and to be positive, drug-free role models for their peers. SMART Leaders I involves five small group sessions consisting of role-playing and videotapes about identifying different peer pressures to use drugs and engage in sexual activity and learning to resist those pressures. SMART Leaders II is taught in a three-session video format, with one session dedicated to resisting alcohol, one session to resisting drugs, and one to resisting early sexual activity. Participants are encouraged to become involved in other programs and activities at the BGCA and encourage their peers to be drug-free.