Fort Payne High School

SADD envisions a world in which young people make positive decisions that advance their health and safety.

SADD’s mission is to empower young people to successfully confront the risks and pressures that challenge them throughout their daily lives.
We accomplish this by creating, equipping, and sustaining a network of student-run chapters in schools and communities focused on peer-to-peer education. SADD fosters a sense of belonging and promotes resiliency, leadership, and advocacy skills so that young people make positive life decisions that will carry them throughout life.

• SADD is an inclusive organization, welcoming all youth who seek support for healthy and safe development.
• SADD is a respectful organization that invites active youth participation and expects youth leadership. Youth voices will be sought out, respected, strengthened, shared, and affirmed. SADD will endorse this approach at all levels of the organization (local, state, and national) and will encourage others to also incorporate this approach.
• We believe young people’s health and safety is improved through positive peer-to-peer interactions, healthy relationships with family and caring adults, and collaboration and alliance with other entities that also support youth.
• We promote broad understanding of the risks facing youth and the importance of reinforcing protective factors. We do this through scientifically supported programs and practices and by sharing youth voices and youth perspectives on issues and laws and policies that involve the education, culture, health, safety, and treatment of youth.

We will be effective in accomplishing our mission through caring, compassionate, and committed reinforcement of protective factors, through the elimination of risk factors for individual teens, and by pursuing best practices, sharing scientific knowledge, and integrating evidence-based approaches into our work from concept to implementation to evaluation.