Building Stronger Futures: How OneEighty’s Youth Mentoring Program Supports Substance Use Prevention in Wayne County

When it comes to supporting local youth, OneEighty’s Wayne County youth prevention mentoring program is far more than a helping hand; it’s a lifeline. At the heart of this effort is Amanda Nickles, Youth Mentoring & Prevention Specialist, who has dedicated her career to empowering students through trusted relationships, personal growth, and prevention education.

Her work across Wayne County’s 11 school districts, including Rittman, Triway, Orrville, Waynedale, and Wooster, reflects a deep commitment to evidence-based prevention and holistic support. The program doesn’t just help students improve academically; it also helps them build the resilience they need to thrive not only during the school day but also long after it ends.

Mentoring That Builds Connection and Prevention Across Schools

For Amanda, mentoring and prevention are inseparable. “I genuinely feel like the prevention piece works because of the mentoring piece,” she says. “I truthfully do not see how you can do prevention without having that mentoring piece.”

How Students Are Identified

Through OneEighty’s youth prevention mentoring program, Amanda meets one-on-one or in small groups with students. Students aren’t chosen at random. They’re identified by trusted school staff, such as teachers or counselors, who recognize they may be facing significant challenges. This at-risk youth support service in Wayne County covers a broad spectrum of issues. While some students are grappling with early substance use, many others are struggling with circumstances beyond their control: substance misuse in the home, instability due to foster care, or a lack of strong social support. Amanda notes that these children are “already at risk because their home dynamic has been kind of disrupted in a way.”

Students are typically identified based on a personal experience, whether it’s behavioral issues in the classroom, struggles with grades, or simply needing an additional, stable, trusted adult presence in their lives.

A Typical Session: Tailored and Trust-Driven

Each session is intentionally personal and grounded in trust. While Amanda uses evidence-based tools like Botvin’s LifeSkills curriculum, she adapts every session to fit the student’s unique needs and interests. “If I see that they’re not engaging with that, we have to find the piece that engages the student to make that connection,” she explains.

Sometimes, that means bonding over a shared interest or passion. “We bond over, you know, cars,” Amanda recalls. “Otherwise, I’m just another face that’s coming in and pulling them out of class.” By finding common ground, she helps students open up, creating space for meaningful conversations about choices, mental health, and substance use prevention.

Using Local Data to Drive Local Solutions

In addition to prevention mentoring, OneEighty uses the Youth Asset & Substance Use Survey (YASUS) to measure protective factors, substance use trends, and mental health indicators in participating school districts. Schools that participate work closely with OneEighty to ensure the process is safe, respectful, and private. The results help guide everything from classroom conversations to community-wide prevention efforts, giving schools and prevention teams the insight they need to respond in ways that matter.

If students don’t see vaping as harmful, we know we need to strengthen education. If they’re feeling disconnected, it shows how important trusted relationships, like those built through mentoring, really are.

For Amanda, the YASUS provides a big-picture view that complements her one-on-one work. It helps connect the dots between what students are saying and how we can better support them.

What Sets OneEighty’s Youth Prevention Mentoring Apart

Amanda’s role as a mentor is based on consistency and ongoing support. She commits to students “for as long as they will have me.” For some, this has meant four years of continuous mentorship and seeing them transition from middle school to high school.

The clearest evidence of the program’s success isn’t found in a test score, but in the students’ ability to advocate for themselves. This growth in self-advocacy is a measure of a student gaining control over their life. This means students start to think about the future, which is a difficult prospect for those who “can’t think about next week because they don’t know what’s happening tomorrow at home.”

Amanda shares that one of her proudest moments was when a student, once unsure and withdrawn, began advocating for continued mentoring sessions after moving to a new school. “The biggest success that maybe we don’t really think about with kids is the advocacy that they learn or grow into,” she says.

Another student was inspired by Amanda’s story to take a ceramics class as a positive outlet after losing her dad. “Sometimes it’s those small moments that show how much a student has grown,” she says. “That’s where the change happens.”

From Prevention to Advocacy: Fighting for Basic Needs

While substance use prevention is a core focus, Amanda’s work consistently reveals a more fundamental crisis: the lack of basic needs.

“There are definite needs in the community, and I think just having those one-on-one conversations: it is mentoring, it is prevention, but it’s also opening your eyes to like, oh my goodness, like, there are so many greater needs than just me sitting here talking to you about not vaping.”

Amanda often finds herself guiding students to resources for food, hygiene, or even simply a positive, healthy outlet. She has personally written down locations for food pantries because, as she points out, “Their bellies are empty, so they don’t care about all this other stuff. But let’s feed them and then let’s talk about all this other stuff.”

Her passion is evident in her unwavering commitment. Through her work, Amanda has become a strong voice for youth in Wayne County. “I have learned so much just about our community and the needs that are in our community,” she says. “And I think this job has made me a huge advocate for services…to the point where I’m like, I will fight for these kids.”

Through our youth prevention mentoring and substance use prevention efforts in Wayne County, OneEighty continues to build a stronger, more connected community, one student, one conversation, and one relationship at a time.