When it comes to drug and alcohol abuse, preventing demand is
most of the battle.
In an effort to identify risk and protective factors, the San
Benito Prevention Coalition is participating in Communities That
Care, a program that offers training, support, mentoring and
networking opportunities.
When it comes to drug and alcohol abuse, preventing demand is most of the battle.
In an effort to identify risk and protective factors, the San Benito Prevention Coalition is participating in Communities That Care, a program that offers training, support, mentoring and networking opportunities.
The San Benito Prevention Coalition is a nonprofit agency with a goal of preventing drug, alcohol and tobacco use among the county’s youth. In October, the coalition offered two all-day-long workshops to develop a community-based framework for keeping children and youth safe and on positive paths.
Participating in Communities That Care is a way for the coalition to assess its programs, said Lucia Aguilar-Navarro, community liaison with the San Benito Prevention Coalition.
“We’ll be able to determine whether the work we’ve been doing is reflecting where the most need is and if not, and, if we need to make adjustments, where,” she said.
At the October workshops, six students from the youth council gave the adults a youth’s perspective. While the adults and students came up with mostly the same risk and protective factors, the students surprised the adults when they identified places like Target, Taco Bell and Kmart as protective factors against drug and alcohol abuse, Aguilar-Navarro said.
“On Saturday nights, when there’s nothing on TV and they’ve already seen all the movies at the theater, they go to Target and hang out there for four hours,” she said.
The No. 1 concern for many community members is that there’s nothing to do in Hollister, said Connie Perales, at-risk advocate with the Hollister School District and coalition board member.
“Most of the people of Hollister know that one of the major risk factors is that there is not enough things to do in town,” Perales said.
While identifying risk and protective factors, workshop attendees looked at crime and health data and tried to connect those to trends. An example would be how the county’s traffic arrests where alcohol was involved were higher than the state average all but one year from 1994 to 1999. The numbers were lower than the state in 1996, but arrests still increased, Aguilar-Navarro said.
The workshops also served to get all the different agencies dealing with youth and drug and alcohol abuse on the same page.
People attending the workshops included elected officials and representatives from the police department, sheriff’s department, probation department, health department, the California Highway Patrol and schools.
“This was another opportunity for us to get the word out about what we are and to do a wide community outreach and recruit people (from the different agencies),” Aguilar-Navarro said.
Because some agencies work toward the same end, efforts should be pooled together, Perales said.
“A lot of organizations in town have the same goals, but there’s not really a cohesive group. This is a way for people to band together,” she said.
The coalition’s executive committee and members of the Green House program will meet Jan. 10 to plan and assess the Green House program. The Communities That Care program was chosen as the training for the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America’s Green House program. The San Benito Prevention Coalition is one of 30 coalitions in the United States picked to participate in the training.
San Benito Prevention Coalition’s budget consists of a $500,000 grant over five years. In October, the coalition entered its third year of the grant.
For more information on Communities That Care or the coalition, call Aguilar-Navarro at 636-4382. The coalition’s next quarterly meeting is Jan. 15 at 6 p.m. at the Dunne Park Clubhouse.
