Photo Voice
Photo Voice is a project COYA has been working on as a way to elevate and convey important issues that affect our lives, the lives of youth, in our community. Often times, laws, policy, regulations and decisions are made or ignored that impact our lives with no regard to the inclusion of youth input or opinions. Photo Voice is a way for us to reach out to the community about the problems and issues we face everyday. Issues like smoking, vaping, and litter are problems we see everyday in our community, and Photo voice allows us to tell our side of the story and show parents, public law officials and others that we care about these issues because they affect not only us but our peers and the community we are growing up in.
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"I decided to come early around 7AM to Lodie to see how much cigarette litter I could find. These were all the one's I collected.
I accidentally collected a broken pencil too, I found this ironic how the pencil just kind of blends in."
Location: Santa Barbara High
Location: Santa Barbara High
"This is interesting. Some of this is the plant and some of it is cigarette litter. It looks like kids were trying to hide it inside the plant. I didn't notice at first, I had to come up close, but the cigarette butts look exactly like the plant." Location: Santa Barbara High
"I went on this beautiful hike. It's this sacred and secret hike, and you can break the pipe right there and it becomes this mineral hot spring. And as I was leaving I saw this one cigarette and it really pissed me off. It's like, this place is so beautiful, and sacred, and it's a fire zone, and then you see this one cigarette butt."
"I took these pictures inside my school building. I can't believe that people actually smoke in the building and just leave the cigarette behind." Santa Barbara High
"I took this picture outside my Dad's office. It's a pretty depressing display and I thought it was super ironic because it's an environmental law office."
"I saw this after Earth Day right outside Alameda Park. It's pretty disgusting, and I'm sure that's not soda in that soda bottle either! A lot of the ash ended up in the planter and I think that's the saddest part."
"There's this gated pathway next to school. It's a little surprising, you don't see a lot of cigarettes on the property but you see a lot next to the school. I think it's depressing to see how the cigarette butts are mixed in with the wood chips, and you almost don't notice them. " -Bishop Diego High School
"This is a stairwell at Santa Barbara City College. There's usually a lot more cigarette butts than this! SBCC is smoke free but I still see a lot of butts everywhere, especially around these stairwells. How many can you count?"
"This is a planter near the parking lot of Kmart. I looked in and saw lots of cigarette butts. People are just lazy and throw it in with the flowers, it's really sad to see."
"This is up on East Camino up in the mountains. Me and my friends like to come here to hike. It's a pretty isolated place so it was surprising to see cigarette litter here and this cigarette was pretty fresh. This is all the way out in the mountains, it's super dry and windy here so why would people be smoking here?"
"This is the parking lot at school. I parked and saw this next to my car. There's a lot of hipsters at school who think they are cool for smoking cigarettes and I see a lot of people smoking in the parking lot all the time."-San Marcos High
"This was taken in the Staff Parking Lot. I guess the school staff must not care a lot if people smoke at school." -San Marcos High
"This was taken at a round about at school on school property. Vapes are common, swishers are super common."-San Marcos High School
"I was on a run and squished tobacco out of the cigarette. This was sometime in the morning near Maria gate, there isn't normally a lot of cigarette litter but I just thought it was gross."
"I was running along the bluffs and saw this. Santa Barbara has really strict fire hazard laws, but I don't get why people are still allowed to smoke on trails like this where it's super easy to start fires."
"This was taken on Leadbetter Beach and there was a trashcan right next to the bench. I think its definitely gross how people can still smoke on the beach."
"I think it's really cool how Santa Barbara City College is smoke free now, but it's still ironic how there's still a lot of cigarette litter everywhere. This was taken by the stairs behind the school near the baseball field. "
"A lot of people don't realize that Santa Barbara Beaches are not smoke free. I think it's inconsiderate how people just leave their cigarette litter on the beaches like this. There was a trashcan right next to where this cigarette butt was thrown too!"
"They wouldn't let me go in so I took this picture outside. This is the vapeshop next to subway and CVS. A lot of kids go to Subway so I'm sure they've seen a lot of the advertising around here."