A local young people’s organization has won a national award for one of its youth education programs.

The Lawrence County SWAT/PRIDE Team took home the Innovative Program Award at the PRIDE 2010 33rd Annual World Drug Prevention Conference in Louisville, Ky., last week.

SWAT stands for Student Wellness Awareness Team; PRIDE stands for Prevention Resources and Information for Drug Education. The team, which works in partnership with the Family Guidance Center, is comprised of students from various schools throughout the county. The team visits schools throughout the year and provides life skills training on such issues as tobacco use and drug abuse.

The team won the award for a game show called PRIDE-apalooza. The game board and playing rules are similar to the television show Jeopardy.

The game topics included school bullying, TYSHL (Things you should have learned) in LST (LifeSkills Training), tobacco, general health, Google This (dealing with internet safety), and school trivia.

“This reinforces what they learn in life skills training, Family Guidance Center Prevention and Development Specialist Mollie Stevens explained. “This is youth-led and you know how young people love game shows. This gets the young people together after the life skills training to reinforce that they learn.”

The local team approximately 50 members. Eleven attended last week’s conference in Louisville.

The SWAT PRIDE team visited Dawson-Bryant Elementary in January and plans to visit Rock Hill, Chesapeake and Ironton middle schools before the end of the school year.