Going global!

Last weekend New York based anti-tobacco industry youth advocacy group Reality Check held a two day event at Niagara Falls to celebrate the International Week of Action Against Smoking in Movies in conjunction with some Canadian youth groups who met across the border in Niagara falls Canada. 

On Saturday the groups came together with another youth advocacy group from Nigeria and invited D-MYST to take part in an international Skype conference call where each group spoke about the campaigning that they had done in their country regarding smoking in movies and D-MYST shared their SmokeOff campaign and the activity they have carried out in Liverpool with regards to smoking in the media.

It was a really great and unique opportunity for D-MYST to showcase their work internationally to other like minded young people and of great interest to hear what other groups are planning around the world!

We are so excited as we have been asked to take part in an international social media party this weekend.

There is a two day event to be held at Niagara Falls to celebrate the International Week of Action Against Smoking in Youth Rated Movies in conjunction with some American and Canadian youth groups who will be meeting across the border in Niagara falls Canada.  We are going to take part in an international SKYPE conference call with the young people from Canada, US, and also Nigeria to do a joint activity together via the call.   

It is a great way to link in with other like minded groups across the world and we are looking forward to sharing ideas meeting new friends!

Launch of our new shisha campaign

Today we launched our new shisha campaign in Liverpool City Centre to raise awareness of the dangers of smoking shisha.

Smoking flavoured shisha tobacco using Hookah waterpipes has become increasingly popular in Liverpool.  It's also particularly prevalent in middle eastern communities where it is a traditional past time.

However many people don't realise that smoking flavoured shisha in a waterpipe is harmful at all, but shisha is a tobacco, it does contain nicotine and it's extremely harmful to health potentially leading to everything from heart disease to cancer. Smoking shisha with a Hookah pipe is about 100 times more harmful than one cigarette.

Hookah pipes are also known to carry additional risks as the mouthpieces aren't cleaned often and as a result users can catch the like of herpes and tuberculosis simply buy using a waterpipe.

Hookah pipes and smoking shisha has become particularly popular in the Liverpool night scene and bar culture, however smoking shisha is illegal in enclosed or substantially enclosed public spaces and if caught you can face a fine of between £50 and £200.

Today was great as lots of people came over to talk to us and many didn't realise the dangers of smoking shisha. Lots of parents and their children were very interested in our literature!

We have so much planned for 2015 and held our first meeting of the year last week!

We have began planning our first campaign of the year that we will be launching in February half term in Liverpool City Centre so we are so we are really busy making sure everything is in place or that!

We are also working on a really exciting project that will put Liverpool on the map for their innovative work with young people! The project is in the really early stages at the moment but we hope to be able to share some details about it with you soon!

Happy New Year!

2014 was a really busy year for us that saw not only the taking of our SmokeOff campaign to the Coronation Street and Eastenders HQs but also the launch of our SmokeFree Cars campaign in Liverpool City Centre in October.

Our SmokeFree cars campaign highlights the dangers of smoking with children in the car as around 185,000 children are exposed to cigarette smoke in their family cars 'every day or on most days'. Children have smaller lungs, faster breathing rates and less developed immune systems, which makes them more susceptible to respiratory and ear infections triggered by smoking. In the confined space of a car, smoke density can build up very quickly to dangerous levels, even with the window open.

As well as writing our campaign literature and designing our campaign creative we also wrote and recorded our own radio infomercial that was played throughout half term on Radio City!

2015 is going to be another busy one starting with a new campaign in the pipeline that we will be launching in February!

We are really busy working on our new campaign that will be launched during October half term! Yesterday afternoon we spent some time in the Radio City recording studios as we recorded some voice-overs for our campaign infomercial! We are really looking forward to hearing the finished version!

Best of luck to our lovely Maia who will be representing D-MYST at the Children's Right Conference in Brussels on Monday! 

Maia will be giving a short presentation about D-MYST and speaking about how the tobacco industry targets young people to take up smoking with their marketing practices, how young people are being targeted, and how effective marketing practices are in influencing the consumption preferences and purchase requests of young people. Maia will also be taking part in roundtable discussions!

We look forward to seeing the photos!