A Drug-Free Frequency

Photograph by Richard Lord

Fifteen-year-old Rene Diaz is only a high-school junior, but he’s already had the opportunity to be a radio producer, editor, and host.

He and nine other New York teen-agers are taking part in a project run by the New York radio station WBAI and Global Kids, a non-profit group that tries to prepare young people to become community leaders. With the help of professionals, the students produce a monthly radio program about substance abuse called Youth Pulse.

The project was designed to teach high-school students about working in radio and to encourage discussions of substance abuse from the perspective of young people.

Youth Pulse was financed with $31,000 from Sound Partners for Community Health, a program run by the Benton Foundation, in Washington, and underwritten by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in Princeton, N.J.

Students who work on Youth Pulse are first taught to work in a team and to develop communications skills, says David Velasquez, project coordinator for Global Kids. Then a WBAI disk jockey and radio producer named Brother Shine shows them how to use the station’s equipment and how to do interviews.

The students produce the entire program, rotating responsibilities with each show so that everyone gets a chance to be an interviewer, an editor, and a producer.

After the program is broadcast, tapes of the show are played in classrooms, where students offer comments and suggestions — most of which have been positive, say the project’s leaders. In addition, listeners have called the radio station to say that the show has opened up a dialogue about drugs in their homes.