Prevention++ is an initiative that comes to tackle one major challenge for the EU community at a general level, and for vulnerable communities in particular: addictions. The topic is well known, approached in many academic papers, while professionals active in health system and in national authorities are designing various schemes to hinder mass phenomena among young people. There are many regional, national and international campaigning that aim at reducing the incidence of addictions, nevertheless the majority are focused on intervention and rehabilitation measures of those who are severely affected by addictions. Just few initiatives have channeled their resources exclusively on the preventive and implicitly educational side of the phenomenon. Similar to other threatening social phenomena among young people (illiteracy, school dropout, early crimes, etc.), when talking about addictions, the resources of public initiatives are channeled to fight against the effects, to the detriment of early identification of causes. For example, alcoholism is often rooted in the precarious family environment, marked by domestic violence and intolerance, inflamed by poverty and lack of involvement of local authorities. Members of the addicts’ communities are not supporting them almost at all when comes to rehabilitation, therefore the sooner preventive education is present into youngsters’ environment, the lower is the risk of social exclusion for them. For two years, three NGOs from Romania, Austria and Latvia will develop a polyvalent and comprehensive prevention manual, with three components: 35 NFL methods with adaptations for disabilities, learning difficulties, illiterates; guidelines for delivering preventive work; guidelines for creating prevention campaigns. With 90-100 A4 pages, the manual aims at providing a clear practice for working against tobacco, alcohol and cannabinoids abuse disorder. Within three international learning activities, 36 youth workers and volunteers will be equipped with an extended set of competences that will empower them to deliver prevention work in their communities. They will develop, test and upgrade the non-formal methods in multiple local actions, engaging with minimum 180 youngsters/partner. Most of these youngsters are facing vulnerabilities that increases the risk of social exclusion and are fueling an addictive behavior: ethnic minorities, illiterates, poverty, precarious family background, disabilities. In their communities, these factors are combined and are increasing the risk of addictive behaviors. We aim at working with an age range of 13-21 y.o. from both urban and non-urban areas. Project’s objectives: • By the end of the project, 75% of the youth workers and volunteers involved will demonstrate advanced content knowledge of prevention work as measured by assessing outcomes on ex-ante and post project’s development. • Raising the level of awareness with at least 50% among the participants involved in local actions of the relation between substance abuse disorder and social exclusion, employability, health, financial and social status by the end of the project, through NFL methods developed in a prevention manual. • Granting access to preventive education for minimum 1000 beneficiaries/partner by the end of the project, by transferring the practice of preventive education as an optional or compulsory object in the curriculum of 10 organizations/partner within project’s duration. We are going to develop a durable network of youth workers in those communities where vulnerable youngsters are living around factors that fuel the risk of social inclusion, by increasing their knowledge of the impact caused by addictions on personal and community level and increasing their self-confidence in working with vulnerable young people. Also, they will have a deepened understanding of social topics from the communities where they are active. The young people involved in the local activities will increase their decisional self-confidence in relation to addictive substances and they will adopt a conscious and critical attitude towards them. They will also increase their self-esteem knowing that the EU and the society is concerned about the risks they are facing and that their community is taken care of and will also develop a better capacity to empathize and relate with youngsters affected by substance abuse disorder. Our final goal of the project is to create all the prerequisites for transferring the prevention work in the curriculum of minimum 10 organizations/partner: schools, NGOs, youth clubs, service support providers that would grant access to minimum 1000 beneficiaries/country. All the activities and resources involved in this project are channelled into ensuring that the prevention work will become a practice in the comunities where we will be present.
We wanted to provide wider access to prevention education for vulnerable youth exposed to substance abuse disorders, with a focus on tobacco, alcohol and cannabinoids. In order to achieve this, we managed to create a network of youth workers competent to provide preventive education programmes for teenagers living in various social contexts. We wanted to create a robust ‘recipe’ of how preventive education should be delivered by professionals in the field of youth and not only. Prevention++ proposed three main objectives: - Equipping a network of 36 youth workers with relevant competences in preventive education by attending three learning activities (RO, LV, EE). These participants tested the methodology in local activities with their beneficiaries and provided feedback on how effective the methods are. - Raised awareness of the relation between substance abuse disorder and social exclusion among the participants in the local activities, by using the manual of preventive education consisting of 35 non-formal methods. - Granting access to preventive education for 1000 beneficiaries/partner, by transferring the manual in the optional or compulsory curriculum of 10 organizations/partner.
This project aims at bringing quality prevention education to youngsters from disadvantaged communities by recognizing the indispensable role of non-fomal education in reducing the risk of developing addictions among these groups. We touched several needs identified in our research: - Health is an unaddressed topic in the case of vulnerable young people. They are engaged in basic educational programs, where health-related activities are superficial or even non-existent. - Need of higher quality of preventive education. We targeted active youth workers and volunteers engaged with youngsters at risk of social exclusion. The end beneficiaries we engaged with (urban & non-urban) are young people aged 13-21 who face various limitations. - Need of understanding the relationship between substance abuse disorders and social exclusion. Preventive education is an essential element for early reducing the associated risks, as addictions are often associated with other factors that fuel social exclusion. In a long run, the development of an addiction causes significant costs for an individual and for society. With this project we also intend to build a critical thinking competence for the youngsters at risk of developing an addiction.