Benjamin Franklin, the oldest of our Founding Fathers, coined the phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Is it really? As a community, our ultimate goal is to empower our youth to choose a drug-free life.
Benjamin Franklin, the oldest of our Founding Fathers, coined the phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Is it really?
As a community, our ultimate goal is to empower our youth to choose a drug-free life. In spite of our best prevention efforts, not all people remain drug free.
There are currently more than 22 million drug users in the United States and a large percentage of them are children and young adults.
So how do we prevent drug use? It is a complex process of education and behavior change. Drug prevention involves the promotion of positive youth development and the development of positive social environments at home, at school and in the community that facilitate drug-free lifestyles.
Effective prevention of youth substance abuse — including alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs — and other antisocial behaviors requires a comprehensive, data-driven, outcomes-focused, research-based strategic approach. Effective prevention mobilizes all domains of influence on young people’s healthy development: communities, families, schools, young people and their peers. We all need to make a sincere commitment to preventing illegal drug use.
But most importantly, we also need to be sincere mentors to our children. Many of us adults lecture and preach to our children about what they should and shouldn’t do, and yet our behaviors and habits are questionable. Do we really need to smoke that cigarette at the sports field, pop open a beer right after a funeral, have a drink with dinner on a school field trip, hang a banner with an alcohol logo on a park fence? Think about it. Children learn behavior from the adults they trust.
Here are just a few of our community partners in prevention:
D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), the highly acclaimed program that gives kids the skills they need to avoid involvement in drugs, gangs, and violence. D.A.R.E. is a police officer-led series of classroom lessons that teaches in the fifth grade how to resist peer pressure and live productive drug and violence-free lives.
The D.A.R.E. curriculum is taught by police officers whose training and experience give them the background needed to answer the sophisticated questions often posed by young students about drugs and crime. Kaua‘i has approximately 850 fifth graders enrolled in the program. For more information on D.A.R.E., call Kaua‘i Police Sgt. Ken Carvalho at 241-1697.
Central District Drug Prevention Coalition is a group of citizens and organizations dedicated to creating a system of support that engages and empowers the youth and adults in the Central District of Kaua‘i “to make the choice to be drug free.”
Goals include the desire to provide programs to build parenting skills, to offer mentoring programs to foster a sense of personal responsibility, to increase and stabilize CDDPC membership, to establish like skills programs in school curriculum at every level, and to identify, promote, and support programs that offer enrichment, skill building and character development to engage youth and families. We invite anyone interested in participating to contact Mary Navarro at mnavarro@haleopio.org.
East Kaua‘i Drug Prevention Education Team is a group of individuals and agencies located in east Kaua‘i that have common interest in drug prevention and family strengthening. This team has been meeting monthly since 2003 and focused on addressing risk and protective factors specific to each of the communities: Wailua, Kapa‘a, Kapahi, Kawaihau, Anahola, Moloa‘a, Kilauea, Princeville, Hanalei and Ha‘ena.
We have collaborated on many events including parenting classes, family nights, movies in the park, youth days, community meetings, and our annual Celebrating Families Summit. Our team continues to grow as our efforts are noticed in the community. Our limited resources do not allow us to share all of our accomplishments and efforts as so much of our growth is through networking and the relationships with community members. Parenting Classes include; Parent Project, Loving Solutions, Motheread/Fatheread, Guiding Good Choices, and Homework Helps.
Hale ‘Opio Kaua‘i, Inc. is a Kaua‘i nonprofit providing residential and in-community behavioral health services for children, youth and their families. Services available include Therapeutic Group Home, Therapeutic Foster Home, Group Foster Home, Kaua‘i Teen Court, Emergency Shelter Services, Victim Impact Classes, Street Smart, Making Proud Choices, and Independent Living Program. www.haleopio.org
Kahuna Valley is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization located in Kapa‘a that works closely with the East Kaua‘i Drug Prevention Education Team as the fiscal agent for many family, youth and teen programs. These include Parent Project, Choosing Life / Choosing Success, Mentor ‘Ohana, and Loving Solutions, as well as Hawaii Council for the Humanities programs. Using its own proprietary online data collection, evaluation, and reporting software, Kahuna Valley offers effective solutions for working with community data to help the county, state, Board of Education, and other organizations. Check them out at www.kahunavalley.org and www.mentorohana.org
Leadership Kaua‘i is focused on bridging Kaua‘i’s needs with local resources by fostering qualified, effective, motivated and culturally sensitive individuals who share a commitment to create a meaningful future for all. This dedicated cadre of leaders are aimed at building a healthy community while being conscious of the environment, by networking viable resources, and solidifying a prosperous future which is inclusive of everyone. The many programs that Leadership Kaua‘i offers intend to fill the infrastructure of our communities, businesses and homes with people who will be responsible for expanding and balancing opportunities while laying the foundation for the future of our island. Programs and services include the Annual Leadership Program for Adults, Pi‘ina Hoku Youth Leadership Program, Speaker Series, Leadership Development Program, and Ka Ulu Pono. For more detailed information on these programs, contact Director Mason Chock at mason@leadershipkauai.org or www.leadershipkauai.org
Kaua‘i Team Challenge Inc.’s mission is to foster a healthy community through program models utilizing outdoor experiential education, adventure-based therapy, cultural awareness, mentorship, and team building skills. Through the employment of a challenge ropes course and mentorship activities, Kaua‘i Team Challenge has led the way to building teams, trust, resiliency, communication, self-esteem and problem solving among our youth, community members, businesses, groups and future leaders. Programs and services include: The Waipa Ropes Course, Kukui Malamalama, Kaua‘i Team Challenge Corporate Training. Contact Mason Chock at mason@kauaiteamchallenge.com or at www.kauaiteamchallenge.com
We have much more agencies providing prevention services, for more information on our prevention partners, check out our Kaua‘i Community Drug Response Plan at www.kauai.gov.
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to read Beyond The Influence. In our next column, we will be talking about Integration, our final phase of our four-pronged approach to drug abuse and addiction.
