Alexandria Star Student Chloe Makes Difference Supporting Youth Peers

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Star Students are found in classrooms, on concert and theater stages and at debate lecterns, and out in the community doing good things to make life better for all of us.

Here at Patch, we've launched an initiative to help recognize Star Students, and we’re working to tell the stories of these outstanding kids to their neighbors.

This submission comes from Emma Beall who nominated Chloe of Alexandria, Virginia.

Star local student’s name

Chloe

What grade is your star local student in?

12th grade

How do you know the star local student?

As a Peer Advocate, Chloe supports prevention and outreach efforts in the City of Alexandria. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition of Alexandria (SAPCA), which I coordinate.

Why do you believe the star local student should be recognized?

I have worked alongside Chloe since September 2021 when she became a Keep It 360 Peer Advocate. Through this role, Chloe collaborates with her peers, community leaders, and staff from the Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition of Alexandria (SAPCA), the Alexandria Campaign on Adolescent Pregnancy and the Alexandria Sexual Assault Center to support prevention and outreach efforts. Chloe’s passion for making a difference for youth in her community is evident to those who interact with her daily. From facilitating prevention lessons to middle school students, to crafting social media content to promote community resources, Chloe is always excited to learn, willing to adapt, and ready to make a difference in her community. During her first year in the program, Chloe worked collaboratively with her peers to create and deliver 15 workshops to a total of 800 middle school students. Workshops addressed a range of issues facing Alexandria youth, including substance use prevention, peer pressure, and healthy relationships. During her second year as a Peer Advocate, Chloe’s prevention knowledge and leadership skills continued to grow, as did her community impact. She worked with her peers to deliver 18 workshops to a total of 1,026 middle school students. Currently in her third year as a Peer Advocate, Chloe helps mentor younger Peer Advocates by providing suggestions for addressing tough topics and always refocusing the group on its mission– shaping a healthier community. Through this role, she also began attending SAPCA’s monthly coalition meetings. Here, she continued learning about local youth substance use and misuse and shared her input in identifying, selecting, and addressing key priorities for prevention. Since her first year as a Peer Advocate, I have seen Chloe’s personal and professional growth increase exponentially. She has attended local and national conferences to learn about prevention tools and cultivate her leadership skills. Through these opportunities, she has also applied her knowledge and skills to local initiatives. She has also supported a wide array of prevention efforts, including brainstorming strategies to prevent youth vaping, collaborating with her peers to plan and host a teen night, and highlighting approaches to prevent underage drinking during a community town hall. Regardless of the task at hand, Chloe is always eager to find out how she can best support children, youth, and families in Alexandria. Chloe also possesses the strong interpersonal skills necessary to connect youth and families with prevention information. She has an unparalleled ability to captivate the attention of middle school youth during after- school workshops – by no means an easy task – and helps families navigate community resources with ease during in-person outreach events. As she wraps up her senior year of high school, Chloe is eager to be attending the University of Rochester next fall as a Posse Scholar, a program that provides full-tuition scholarships to individuals with extraordinary leadership potential. I look forward to seeing how Chloe continues to develop as a leader and a prominent advocate.

What's one thing you want everyone to know about the star local student?

Chloe co-presented a workshop at the City of Alexandria’s 2022 Youth Leadership Conference titled: Standing for Tomorrow for Environmental Health. This workshop highlighted the experience of Chloe and several of her peers advocating for healthy and safe learning environments in response to a science fair experiment that identified mold in several classrooms. The workshop fit in very well with that year’s conference’s theme: Lead with Courage. Chloe and her peers discussed their advocacy efforts, which included presenting at a Parent Teacher Association meeting and a School Board meeting; meeting with their school principal, the school district superintendent, Virginia State Senator George Barker and Virginia State Senator Adam Ebbin; and testifying at the Virginia State Capitol about the bill. In May 2019, Chloe and her peers invited Senator Ebbin to visit their classroom to share their story with him. He was so impressed, he told them he wanted to propose a bill to address their concerns. Chloe and her peers worked with Senator Ebbin to refine their presentation and develop a policy proposal. In January 2020, Senator Ebbin proposed a bill (Senate Bill 845) that would require local school boards across the state to develop and implement a plan to test and, if necessary, a plan to remediate mold in public school buildings in accordance with guidance issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Chloe and her peers traveled to Richmond, VA to testify on behalf of the bill in front of a senate subcommittee. The bill passed the house and senate in March of 2020 and was signed by Virginia’s Governor in April 2020.

Congratulations on your achievements, and all of our best wishes to you in the future, Chloe!

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