National Drug Abuse Prevention Unit on the move

The month of April will be a very busy and exciting one for us at the National Drug Abuse Prevention Unit.  The Unit has been engaged in a number of developmental activities to further enhance the life skills of its clients.  One such program is the Prison Drug Education Program which commenced on April 13th and will run till July 13th, 2011. Twenty six (26) inmates have been selected to participate in the three months programme which will focus on life skills, drug education, edutainment, release and reintegration. Officials of the Dominica Prison Services are collaborating with it Unit in this program.

As a follow up to last year’s workshop with over 50 early childhood educators, on April 15th and 29th twelve 12 preschool teachers will participate in workshops towards the production of a manual with a series of lesson plans for teaching drug education that is age appropriate at the preschool and kindergarten levels. The lesson plans will be integrated into core subject areas such as Language Arts, Health and Family Life and Social Studies.  Drugs are not child’s plays there- fore early intervention will help children to develop into healthy adults.

The Drug Information Network (DIN) will meet for a half day workshop on Thursday, April 21st, 2011 at the Princess Margaret Hospital Conference Room. The workshop will seek to finalize a draft report on Dominica Alcohol and other Drug Information prepared by Nurse Joan Henry. The follow institutions and government agencies are currently part of the DIN: National Drug Abuse Prevention Unit, Commonwealth of Dominica Police Force (Drug Squad/Criminal Investigation Department), welfare Division, Financial Intelligence Unit, Dominica State Prison, Health Promotion Resource Center, Legal Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Acute Psychiatric Unit. New members are being identified to form part of the network. The report will provide useful data for decision making.

24 students of the Castle Bruce Secondary School successfully completed a Peer Helpers Counselling course which was organised by Ms Leandra Cuffy Drug Abuse Prevention Officer in collaboration with Mrs.Pricilla Bannis, Pastoral Care Coordinator at the school and Mr.Thomas Holmes Counsellor, Ministry of Education. This Cadre of students will serve as a resource pool to help other students in dealing with challenging issues (social and emotional) confronting them. The programme consisted of a series of six sessions facilitated by other resource persons. A graduation ceremony will be schedule before the end of the month.

Dominica has received its Country Report for participating in the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM).   The MEM is a diagnostic tool designed by all member states of the Organisation of American States to periodically carry out comprehensive, multilateral evaluation of the progress of action taken by member states and by the hemisphere as a whole in dealing with the drug problem. ‘

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