Students in Karns City High School's entrepreneurship class 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. One of their projects was a dodgeball tournament.

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.

“Every kid in Karns City will have to write a grant application,” Liput said.

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.

Here's how it works: Liput's entrepreneurship class divides into groups and each pick one of four issues. Those are addiction, depression, homelessness and abuse.

The two groups that recently participated chose addiction and depression.

Dodgeball Against DrugsA team of students, three of whom made themselves available for interviews, set out to bring dodgeball back to the high school.Luke Rottman, an 18-year-old senior from East Brady, said the idea came to him from the back row of his classroom.“We aren't allowed to do dodge ball anymore,” Luke said. “It wasn't until about eighth grade when some kids started to complain. Parents got involved, and they said, 'No more dodge ball.' I'm sitting in the back thinking, 'Man, let's do dodgeball.'”After picking an event, Luke said his group chose their issue out of concern about drug use.“We wanted to work on the opioid epidemic,” Luke said. “Even we're noticing it. It's really bad.”So, when the day came, seventh and eighth graders gathered in the school's gym in teams for some healthy competition.Anthony Grazioli, a 17-year-old senior from Karns City, and Chloe Sumney, a 15-year-old 10th grader from Karns City, served as the announcers for the competition. Throughout the game, the pair would call for silence in the room and share statistics about drug use in the area, state and nation.“We were reading out facts, statistics about stuff like target populations affected by the opioid epidemic, different facts about what opioids are, the effects of opioid use,” Anthony said.The team originally wanted the whole high school to participate. Assistant Principal Brenda Knoll said she had to step in and shut that down due to size constraints. Her interference, she said, is reminiscent of real-world problems grant writers run into.Dodgeballs aside, Knoll still supports the program.“It's kids talking about real issues,” Knoll said. “Sometimes it makes much more of an impact coming from their peers.”

Be Here TomorrowThe other crew sought to raise awareness of suicide and depression among the student body.Alex Wolczak, a 16-year-old 10th grader from Chicora, said his group started by surveying the student body to collect data. They asked questions about how students react to frustrating circumstances and how they deal with difficult emotions, according to Liput, but the answers were confidential.“Even though the rate has been lowering for suicide, I think it's still the second-most common death for teenagers,” Alex said.The Centers for Disease Control said suicide is the third-leading cause of death for teens, representing 11 percent of such deaths.The students used their funding to bring in Kristie Knights, a Pittsburgh-based psychotherapist. Knights and the student group took the collected data and led an assembly titled “Be Here Tomorrow” for seventh through ninth graders.Liput said a student approached the student team after the assembly and shared that they had previously dealt with suicidal thoughts.

Grant FundingSimilar to the real world, not all the student proposals won funding. One group, Ehrenfried-Neveux said, vocalized great ideas, but didn't translate them to paper. The human services judges passed it over.Those and others who didn't win the grant joined the winning teams to make their projects happen.Those that were funded were given $250.Ehrenfried-Neveux said the funding came from the county's own grant: a state Human Services Block Grant Butler County has received every year since its induction in 2012. Butler County was one of 20 counties identified as annual recipients in 2012. The county was allocated about $313,000 in fiscal year 2018.“There's a lot of money for treatment,” Ehrenfried-Neveux said. “But there's not a lot for prevention.”Using the limited prevention money to involve students, she said, can make their efforts more successful.Liput is about to start the grant process over again with a new batch of students. She and Ehrenfried-Neveux said they're eager to see the ideas their next batch of applicants dream up.