Vybz Kartel a.k.a Addi the Teacha thrilled dozens of students from the Edith Dalton James High School who attended an adolescent healthy lifestyle workshop held at the Alhambra Inn in St. Andrew.

The workshop was geared towards in-school adolescents as a means of promoting healthy lifestyles in order to reduce or eliminate risky behaviours associated with HIV/AIDS, Sexual Reproductive Health, Violence Prevention and Substance Abuse. True to his name, Addi played a pivotal role as the Teacha when he engaged the facilitators, teachers and children in a frank and experiential discussion about violence in Jamaica.

Vybz Kartel implored the students to choose their role models carefully, pulling on examples from his own life to drive home his point.

My father worked seven days a week, and he is my role model, he told the gathering.

The person with the most influence on your life cannot be the dads on the corner, it must be your mother, your father, your schoolteacher, someone professional, you cannot aspire to be a badman because that path leads to destruction and death, he said.

Badness lead to destruction and death, you know how many youths I grow up wid over Waterford no mek it, I am in my early 30s, nuff ah dem no live fi see 2310,000 people get murdered in the last seven years in Jamaica, check that. Dont run down anything, dont follow the worst example, dont let your peers influence youtoo much youth inna badness in Jamaica, no space no de de fi yu, he said.

There were moments of humour as well. He sang a snatch of Empire Army and then gave a sobering lesson.

If yuh no join the JDF, dont send fi no army, yuh wi get gunshot, he said to laughs.

Tomorrow when yuh go school, yuh ah go have people ah try draw yuh out, a girl ah go bounce yu, and a man ah go spin him ratchet and pree yuh, but remember that education is the key. Everyone cannot be a badman, everyone cannot be a deejay, he said.

One of the students asked him about the recent picture which appeared on the front pages of the Jamaica Star and the Sunday Herald.

Those pictures were taken in Martinique, and they were props from a music video for Aidonia, and that is why I will be suing those companies because of precisely the kind of negative message that they are sending to the youths. Further, they did not seek to establish the authenticity of the picture before they published it, he said.

One adult sought to examine the role of violent dancehall music as a catalyst for further violence in inner city areas.

90 per cent of the responsibility for raising a child rests on you the parentwhen the system breaks down, that is the breakdown of the family unit and other institutions, the government seeks scapegoats and often times, they choose the artistes as those scapegoats. When a man with a gun is going out there to kill, I dont think he is thinking about Vybz Kartel, he said.

Music is art, it no tek life.

The workshop was held as part of a behaviour change communication strategy with specific focus on edutainment (entertainment-education) - an approach using entertainment to convey educational messages as well as one which uses emotions to appeal to the audiences behavior change.