Storytelling for Empowerment (Latino Youth)

Storytelling for Empowerment is a school-based, bilingual (English and Spanish) intervention for teenagers at risk for substance abuse, HIV, and other problem behaviors due to living in impoverished communities with high availability of drugs and limited health care services. The program primarily targets Latino/Latina youth and uses cognitive decision-making, positive cultural identity (cultural empowerment), and resiliency models of prevention as its conceptual underpinnings. Storytelling for Empowerment aims to decrease alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use by identifying and reducing factors in the individual, family, school, peer group, neighborhood/community, and society/media that place youth at high risk for ATOD use, while enhancing factors that may strengthen youth resiliency and protect against ATOD use.