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Former NBA Player Speaks To Local Students

Chris Herren, center, is pictured with Falconer Central School students.

Chris Herren, a former NCAA and NBA player, spoke with more than 600 ninth through 12th graders and staff members from Falconer and Randolph in the Falconer High School auditorium recently. Since 2009 Herren has built a community around substance use prevention, preventative strategies around mental health support and has spoken with not only professional sports teams in the NFL and NBA but also with more than 2 million high school students.

Herren continues to share his story nationally with a renewed focus on prevention education on substance abuse disorder, mental health and wellness and focuses on challenging his audiences to look at struggle in regard to the First Day vs the Last Day. In 2019 Herren released the film The First Day, a film addressing issues that school systems, communities and people across the country are impacted by, directly or indirectly, including substance abuse and mental wellness.

Herren’s recent program was sponsored by Collaborative Children’s Solutions, which has worked with Herren since 2021 by partnering with many school districts and agencies throughout Chautauqua County allowing Herren to make numerous visits to Chautauqua County and speak to more than 5,000 high school students and business leaders.

While at Falconer Herren also took the time to speak with Falconer students for CCS-TV, allowing the students to ask Chris student-driven questions on his career and work. The interview is available on www.ccs-tv.com.

“Working with Chris is extremely rewarding and productive by allowing the students to identify the support they have at their fingertips rather than them thinking they are alone and have no one advocating for them,” said Patrick Smeraldo, Collaborative Children’s Solutions executive director. “The leadership that both the administrators and staff of Falconer and Randolph schools showed with allowing us to bring Chris in is just as rewarding knowing that both districts would accept the partnership we offered to work together in advocating for the kids.”

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