WHEREAS, The Health Promotion Council is a nonprofit organization that focuses on addressing chronic disease prevention and management through direct service, capacity-building and policy and systems-change initiatives by empowering individual families and addressing the environment in which they live, work, learn and play; and
WHEREAS, The Advocacy Institute is a premier youth empowerment program teaching young leaders to use policy, community and media advocacy to make sustainable community change; and
WHEREAS, The Health Promotion Council and the Advocacy Institute recently launched its Anti-Tobacco empowerment program called Real Talk Tobacco which seeks to use the Advocacy Institute model to train youth to use policy, community and media advocacy to make sustainable Anti-Tobacco change; and
WHEREAS, The effective advocacy of youth leaders during the launch of the Real Talk Tobacco Program solicited such an incredibly positive response that a press conference was held Wednesday, February 24th in order for them to launch the #Philly1st Media Campaign; and
WHEREAS, The #Philly1st Campaign calls for the whole of Philadelphia to work at becoming the first City with a zero percent youth smoking rate and is the beginning of a movement towards making Philadelphia tobacco-free; and
WHEREAS, This Campaign launch begins a mobilization of youth that culminates March 5th at the Real Talk Tobacco #RISE Youth Summit, which brings Anti-Tobacco leaders and youth in the same room and incorporates breakout sessions focused on specific advocacy skills in order to challenge hundreds of young people from across the Greater Philadelphia Area to stand up and learn how to bring down Big Tobacco; and
WHEREAS, Supporting and empowering Philadelphia’s youth to effectuate positive change in their communities and in this City is crucial to the success and future of our City and its budding young leaders; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, THAT THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, hereby recognizes and acknowledges the #Philly1st Campaign, the Advocacy Institute and Real Talk Tobacco’s youth-led media campaign, for their efforts and initiative which calls for the whole of Philadelphia to work towards becoming the first City with a zero percent youth smoking rate.
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