Spotlight With David Daggett: Celebrating 35 Years of Safe Sober

It’s incredible to realize that we’ve reached the 35th year of our Safe Sober program! Over the years, the program has reached more than 600,000 students throughout the Triad. We have stayed true to our founding principles while adapting the program as time has gone on to reach students in today’s world. Those founding principles have shaped young lives across the region, and awareness, positive peer pressure, and support remain the pillars of the program.

The first founding principle of the Safe Sober program is awareness. For students, that means raising awareness of the dangers of drugs and alcohol. For us, which includes the community, business leaders, and parents, awareness also means being aware of the difficulties and challenges that our students face today. Principals and educators understand that students turn over every year and our mission is never fully done. Today’s students have challenges that are different than the hurdles previous generations faced. The students need support from all of us. They want us and they need our support.

Our second founding principle is positive peer pressure. The peer pressure that our young people experience today is tremendous. One way to help them navigate these types of pressure is to cultivate an atmosphere of positive peer pressure. They want leadership.  They want guidance. They want direction.  They want to succeed. Moreover, they want to do the right thing. Of course, we were all the same way. They need our help. Studies have shown that the single most important factor in the success of a young person is to have one adult outside of their family take a personal interest in them as an individual. As adults in our community, we have a responsibility to foster positive relationships with young people to help them grow. 

Safe Sober’s third founding principle is generating parental, community, and business support for our young people. The single best way for us to ensure the future of our communities is for each of us to love at least one other child as much as we love our own kids. The future is in our hands, and we cannot fail. 

They are all our children. They’re down the hall, in our classrooms, at church, in our community centers, and they need us. I invite you to join us in wrapping our collective arms around our students and young people. These students want to succeed, and they need our encouragement and support. Over the past 35 years, we now have reached generations of students who have heard the Safe Sober message and have benefited from leadership, guidance and direction. We invite you to join us in our mission to help students ‘make the right choice.’