A grant program Butler community services is doing where they collect grant applications from high schoolers with plans to fight problems like addiction and youth suicide.

KARNS CITY — County health advocates think they’ve found a way to make young people listen: let high schoolers do the talking. And, if they insist, let them play a little dodge ball too.

Last year, staff in the drug and alcohol program at Butler County Human Services started a minigrant program for students in the Karns City School District. Students in the high school’s entrepreneurship class, which is becoming required curriculum as the district adopts a state career development mandate, dream up ways to curb problems, such as student addiction, as well as apply for grants and carry out their ideas if their project is selected.

Marneice Liput, a business teacher, is fresh off the first round of completed projects and looking ahead to a twice-annual tradition.

The program started as a trial run last year, but that class didn’t get grant money or carry out their projects. After the fall 2018 class managed to put on two events in mid-January, Liput and Beth Ehrenfried-Neveux, who supervises the county’s drug and alcohol program, thought it was time to fill the public in on the program.

This is an excerpt — pick up Wednesday’s Butler Eagle or subscribe to butlereagle.com to find out projects were funded and meet the students who came up with the ideas.