Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009

During Red Ribbon Week, Melissa Turbeville hung ribbons on the doors of Waccamaw Elementary School, where she is a mentor. Red ribbons signify a stand against illicit drugs and pay tribute to Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, a drug enforcement agent kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Mexican drug traffickers in 1985.

Turbeville, a 2009 Conway High School graduate, is the 2009 North Charleston Miss Teen USA and will participate in the state pageant Nov. 21. The winner of that pageant will represent South Carolina in the 2010 Miss Teen USA pageant.

Now a freshman at Coastal Carolina University, Turbeville is pursuing a degree in elementary education. Every Monday, she mentors eight fifth-grade girls at Waccamaw Elementary School in a program called Mondays with Melissa, which is based on the national program Salvaging Sisterhood. "It's just something that I wanted to get involved in," she said.

"The girls are loving it," said Mandy Crosland, school counselor and teacher.

One aspect of the program is to teach young girls that they can overcome bad things that happen in their lives. Heartbroken by the recent death of her closest male friend, Turbeville has managed to continue doing that.

She said she thinks it is important to get together with the girls and talk about making the right decisions, peer pressure, self-esteem, accepting people for who they are, gossiping and many other issues.

She hopes to help prepare them for middle school, where they will be facing different challenges.

"Middle school is a real confusing time. They face so many things that they're socially not prepared for," Crosland said.

Crosland hopes to rotate the girls so that more of them can take part in the program. She said she would also like to have more young mentors, especially males to mentor the boys.

Turbeville attended Waccamaw Elementary School, where her mother, Joy Turbeville, is a music teacher. While in high school, she was a teacher cadet and interned in a third-grade classroom at the school. "I really just fell in love with teaching, and that's definitely what I want to do," she said.

She is a member of the Coastal Carolina Concert Choir, which is preparing for a Dec. 1 concert, and she was recently initiated into the Alpha Delta Pi Sorority.

She has worked with Special Olympics, and she became involved in Mothers Against Drunk Driving through the North Charleston Miss Teen USA pageant. The proceeds from that pageant went to MADD in memory of its director's daughter. A drunk driver killed Elisabeth Ashley Mills, a daughter of Director Laura Mills.

Crosland is having a program for Waccamaw Elementary School parents at 4-6 p.m. today titled "Can We Talk about Drugs and Alcohol."