Safe Dates is a three-to-four-day Hazelton Betty Ford Foundation course about healthy relationships, and for nearly 20 years, Buffy Queen has been bringing it to Haywood middle schools. 

She started at KARE House, a Haywood County advocacy center responding to child abuse and neglect through outreach and intervention, after a grant enabled the nonprofit to train a staff member through the nationally recognized curriculum. 

Remember your young teen years, seventh and eighth grade — hopeful, scared, blooming, awkward, wondering. Sound familiar? How about shyly looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend, learning to flirt, first dates, falling in love? While we seldom had a boyfriend or girlfriend yet (and even more rarely, were dating), we were certainly thinking about it. Same with today’s young teens, only now add on the pressure of social media.