JOYCE — Members of a national program geared toward challenges faced by teenagers will give a presentation to Crescent School students and community members next month.
The program, Life Choices, will address issues relating to the recent suicide of a 13-year-old student in a school classroom and touch on other tragic deaths on the North Olympic Peninsula this year.
“They just give some hope to a community in a dark place,” said Joel Richardson, youth pastor at Joyce Bible Church and an organizer of the event.
On May 4, Life Choices will stage an in-school assembly with Crescent middle school and high school students — and possibly students from neighboring districts — then hold a similar program at 7 p.m. in the school gymnasium that will be open to the public.
Organizers say the program will be beneficial to people dealing with student Joe Rogers’ suicide and those facing other suicides and recent tragic deaths on the Peninsula.
Life Choices was founded by the aunt and uncle of Rachel Joy Scott, a student killed in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado.
Using live music, videos, humor and skits involving students, the program focuses on self-respect and self-worth, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, troubled family relationships, sexual promiscuity and abstinence, and life goals.
