Picayune Graduate Named First Mississippi Dropout Prevention Ambassador

If telling his story will keep even one student in school, 18-year-old Brett Campo is happy to share.

Campo, a former dropout turned honors student from Picayune, has been appointed as Mississippi's first "On the Bus" Dropout Prevention Ambassador.

Over the summer months, he is working with school districts and other education-related organizations - such as the YMCA and Boys & Girls Clubs of America - to serve as a motivational speaker, peer counselor and spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Education's statewide dropout prevention initiative. Click here to read Campo's story in The Sun Herald.

"I just want to help people the way that people have helped me," said Campo, who recently graduated from Picayune Memorial High School. "I just want to make a difference."

Campo will serve in the position, offered as a summer internship through the Mississippi Department of Education, until at least August. In the fall, he begins his first year at the University of Southern Mississippi.

While in high school, Campo helped several teachers and administrators launch a graduation campaign called "Project Wipeout Dropouts." The program recruits at-risk students to mentor and monitor other at-risk students.

Campo currently serves on Dr. Bounds' Youth Advisory Board, a 20-member student group that serves as a voice for and to Mississippi school students on education issues. The board is developing legislation to start a dropout prevention pilot program in several school districts across the state.

Students such as Campo can have a huge influence on the decisions their peers make, State Superintendent of Education Dr. Hank Bounds said.

"The best way to reach students is through other students," Dr. Bounds said. "The pressures of being a teenager are immense and sometimes the obstacles that our youth are faced with seem insurmountable. Our boys and girls understand this better than anybody else. They can listen to each other and help find positive solutions that keep our students in school."

Dr. Sheril Smith, director of the Office of Dropout Prevention, said the results from Campo's tenure as the first Dropout Prevention Ambassador will be evaluated at the summer's end.

"We want to see how effective this pilot ambassadorship really is, and if we get good results, we will discuss extending it in the fall," she said.

On the Bus, a statewide dropout prevention initiative, was launched in January 2008 through funding from a grant from State Farm. The project has included two statewide summits and a major public awareness campaign that has garnered national attention. Like Picayune's Project Wipeout Dropout, each school district was required to adopt its own individualized dropout prevention plan as part of On the Bus.

The Mississippi Board of Education has set the bold goal of reducing the dropout rate to 13 percent by 2013.