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BY BETTY ADAMS
Staff Writer 05/16/2008

enlarge Staff photo by Joe Phelan

Students in the Maine Youth Voices group set out some of the shoes that they've collected for Project 1200 on Wednesday afternoon at Winthrop High School. The group is trying to collect and display 1200 pairs of shoes as a graphic representation of how many people die daily of tobacco related causes.

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She and other members of Maine Youth Voices at Winthrop High School are amassing the shoes to illustrate how many people a day die in the United States from tobacco-related illnesses.

They aren't picky about styles.

"We'll take anything: high heels, clogs, adult shoes, children's shoes," Bolster said.

Bolster said Maine Youth Voices has a dual mission.

"We are a group of students looking at preventing underage drinking and trying to stop it in our community. Last year the focus was alcohol-related," she said.

"This year we expanded into tobacco because we have a number of young people who smoke in our community," she said.

In March, the high school students talked to middle-schoolers "about why we don't drink and why we don't smoke," she said.

Bolster said the Project 1200 idea came from a workshop she and Tyler Arsenault attended during a Tobacco Summit at the Augusta Civic Center. "Our presenter from Mountain Valley High School had done it in his school and gotten a lot of success in it," Bolster said. So the Winthrop students decided to adopt it for themselves.

"So far we have almost 300 pair of shoes," Bolster, a Winthrop High School senior, said. Shoes can be dropped off in the office at the high school, she said. "We have a storage area we're keeping them all in," she said.

After the May 23 collection deadline, the shoes will be donated to various nonprofit agencies, Bolster said.

Advising the eight or so students in the project are Megan Karges, community coordinator for Winthrop Public Schools, and biology teacher Danielle Doucette.

Betty Adams -- 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

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