As school ends and summer sun and fun begin, 13 Youth Leadership Project (YLP) teams in the North Country successfully completed their community prevention activities.  The 13 youth groups were each awarded $1,000 by the North Country Health Consortium’s Substance Abuse Prevention Team as part of a pilot project designed to provide the opportunity for youth to develop alcohol and other drug problem prevention strategies for their own communities – from Colebrook to Lincoln.

The YLP teams implemented projects in three areas; prescription drug abuse, underage alcohol consumption, and tobacco use by youth.  Projects included developing public service announcements designed to raise community awareness, collaborating with local police in providing an unused and expired prescription drug drop-off site; and distributing information on advertising strategies used by tobacco companies to target youth in local stores. The North Country can look forward to additional funding for youth-driven prevention activities based on the pilot’s success!  Engaging youth in activities that affect the whole community is a win-win.

www.nchc-csap.org/newsletter.html