thoughts form one of our NJ teenangels about her first presentation to other teens.

When I stepped foot in Howell Middle School, I basically knew I'd be
>talking a bit about things like how to keep kids like ourselves safe on
>the internet as well as how to deal with internet bullying and the
>Teenangels program. It was my first time being part of a formal
>presentation where the audience was more than just my friends and peers
>listening, so I wasn't even expecting kids to really pay attention to
>me or even care about what I had to say. I can definitely say that I
>was shocked at the high participation level of the kids when I did my
>part of the presentation and got them to guess certain statistics and
>let me know what they thought about it. The response gave me this
>remarkable sense - and made us Teenangels realize that we were making
>some sort of a positive difference! Although it was obvious that some
>kids just can't be bothered with caring about anything, I could tell
>that others were certainly affected by some of the stories we brought
>up. I would truly consider it an accomplishment if even one kid made
>changes to be safer online after listening to us speak. At the end of
>the presentation, three girls came up to us and asked us some questions
>and were even surprised to know that most of us had pages up on social
>networking websites like Myspace and Facebook. I think it made them
>realize that we weren't telling them not to do it, but to be safe while navigating them. Bringing that reality to them made them think of us more as role models, rather than teen police!
>Overall, I loved the whole experience and having the opportunity to
>share what we knew with other younger teens who will benefit from it.
>I'm really looking forward to continuing my work as a Teenangel.
>