Well, I was a hit in my two speeches last week.        I'll try to be modest here

but the audiences really did like me, and, more importantly, what I had to say.

The first speech was the easy one, though the audience was a more formal one.

The event was the United Way kick-off fund-raiser and I was in a room with about

forty potential donors to the fine charity.

In my speech I told them about my struggles and triumphs with schizophrenia and

asked them to donate to United Way as it is involved in many areas of mental health

here in this community.     It was only a six or seven minute speech but it went well

and it drew some nice applause.           After it was over I met with a few people and

was privileged to meet the Mayor of our fair city. He shook my hand and told me that it was a good speech.     Aah   I was basking in that for about three days!

The second speech was the following afternoon and was at a large high school.

Two grade eleven classes piled into a meeting room and Carol and I started to

work our magic.           The current focus of the BC Schizo.Society in the Partners in Education program is on Early Intervention.               We really want to make an

impression on young people that schizo. can be detected at a young age and we want to give them the understanding and knowledge to do just that.

So we started off by showing them a video, a sensitive piece about a male in high school who develops schizo.                By the end of it they had a working knowledge of the signs and symptoms that are early intervention keys.

After the video, me and Carol both gave short speeches and then fielded questions from the classes.             It all went well, most of them were attentive enough to stay involved when me and Carol discussed an issue in front of the class.            In light of the recent findings in Australia, as reported by Health Central, I had to drive home a point about marijuana use and schizo. onset.        I hope I made myself clear to them about that fact but I didn't want to lecture young students.

Anyway, it looks like Carol has got a bunch of talks coming up for me, as early intervention is now becoming such a big issue around here.

Take care and have a great week !

Don F.