RSS 2.0 FeedJune 3, 2011, Cover Stories, Merrick Life
Forever 9’s Teens for Life uses education to prevent tragedies
Kayla Babbush encourages peers to seek CPR training.
THE TEENS FOR LIFE booth at Robbie’s Run was manned by the founder, Kayla Babbush. It is her lifesaving mission to continue to bring awareness about CPR and AED training to teens.
by Marissa Young
Merrick teen Kayla Babbush firmly believes that three hours of training can equip people with lifesaving skills for the rest of their lives.
Kayla is the founder of Teens for Life, a branch of the Robbie Levine Foundation. The branch provides schools with AEDs and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) classes. The CPR instruction is free and is scheduled right after school for convenience. Students need to attend just one three-hour course in order to be certified to perform CPR.
Kayla got involved with the Robbie Levine Foundation and Robbie’s Run when she was 10 years old. Her brother was best friends with Robbie, who died at the age of nine after collapsing on a baseball field, with no defibrillator in the vicinity.
Her family has maintained a strong friendship with the Levines. Kayla started as the coordinator of teens and food for the run, and founded Teens for Life as a freshman in high school. Her goal is to train as many people as possible, noting that students are “the new generation.”
Recently, she traveled to Albany with Jill and Craig Levine, Robbie’s parents, to lobby for a bill that would mandate that all students learn CPR in health class in order to graduate. She says that “One simple training class can be a matter of life or death for an infinite number of people.”
Aside from her work for her own organization, Kayla, who is a junior at Kennedy High School in Bellmore, is her school’s Key Club secretary and H.O.P.E. (Helping Out Planet Earth) president. She is also a member of the school’s math and kickline teams.
She says that she will bring the Teens for Life project with her to college and continue to work with school administrations to coordinate classes with high schools.
For information about the organization, you can visit its website at: www.robbielevinefoundation.org/tfl.
