My name is Kevin Pulido and I’m a sophomore at Roswell High School. Since I joined Evolvement a year ago, I have been working on the 24/7 campaign to help make my school and all New Mexico schools truly tobacco-free. Throughout the year, I have participated in 24/7 events at my school, met with my high school principal to talk about resources available to him, and presented to the Roswell Independent School Board to talk about why it’s important to update our tobacco-free policy.

When I presented at my school board meeting, I talked about how we could update our tobacco policy to be comprehensive and all the benefits that would come along with it. I received a lot of great feedback about how Roswell Independent School District could benefit from the free resources provided by 24/7, including the 24/7 toolkit and bilingual, tobacco-free signs. The school board said they would be reviewing a portion of the policy that same week and they were grateful to me for providing them with resources and recommendations for policy updates, because they planned to use them in their review session.

This meeting was beneficial because once the school board updates the policy to be comprehensive, all the schools within my district will be covered by a comprehensive, tobacco-free policy and all will also receive free 24/7 signs and resources communicating this positive change. In the beginning I felt a little nervous, but after the meeting, I left confident that we’re moving closer to our goal of all New Mexico schools becoming truly tobacco-free.

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