Smoke Free Villages - ASH Youth Campaign - Thailand

ASH Smoke Free Villages campaign used youth as health advocates, printed material, art murals and organised community events to convey their anti-smoking message.

Tobacco, Children, Youth, Health, Rights

Village youths were brought together and came up with the following strategies to combat smoking:

• They provided information on the ill effects of smoking to village families who had smoking members.
• They brought anti-smoking stickers to village families that had no smoking members which read "You have entered a non-smoking house".
• A motorcycle rally was organised and participants received posters and stickers with anti-smoking messages. There was also a question and answer forum related to smoking and health.
• Youth within the villages painted murals with anti-smoking and healthy smoke-free messages.

It was felt that using youth as teachers of healthy no-smoking messages empowers them and creates role models for younger children.