President's Message - June 2022

What if, tomorrow, some magical being came and took away your hope? Hope that things will get better, hope that you can accomplish your goals, hope that you can achieve the life you dreamed of?

Now imagine a teenager in that position. What would they have to live for? Why wouldn’t a teen without hope use drugs, alcohol, or tobacco to try to numb that despair? What’s to stop them, in a worst-case scenario, from grabbing the nearest gun and trying to spread that pain to others as widely as possible? Or deciding that life isn’t worth continuing?

A lifeline

For too long, too many people have been looking in the wrong places for a solution to the drug problem.

The problem isn’t too many kids on drugs; it’s too many kids without hope. If we can offer our children the gift of hope, we’re giving them a purpose, which is to make a difference, in their lives as well as the lives of others.

And that’s what Informed Families’ campaigns are all about: offering teens a purpose. And, as the story below illustrates, that sense of purpose can spread throughout the community.

A Story of Hope

This is an excerpt from our Red Ribbon Story Book, published in 1994:

A tiny girl stepped forward from the crowd, and reaching out her little hands, lifted the sagging red ribbon high above her head. Without a word, she and the young boy turned and carried the ribbon forward.

Now everyone understood. One by one, the people of the kingdom stepped forward to take their share of the ribbon. The banker followed the carpenter, who followed the schoolteacher, who followed the blacksmith.

On and on they came, to carry the bright red ribbon throughout the kingdom.

Our mission

Unfortunately, we can’t just wave a magic wand and bestow the quality of hope on our teens. The enduring mission of parenting is to teach our kids that they have the ability of overcome any hardship, that as long as they’re alive, they have the strength to solve the difficulties they will inevitably face, and that taking what they think is the “easy” way out of problems will just make things worse.

The myriad campaigns sponsored by Informed Families are our way of helping parents achieve this difficult but rewarding goal.

-Peggy Sapp, President & CEO