Portland, OR
The Oregon Partnership, Inc.
The Oregon Partnership collaborates with community coalitions, schools, businesses,
health care providers, and religious organizations on drug and alcohol prevention
projects, public awareness campaigns, and treatment referral through several youth-oriented
services. The Too Smart To Start team will sponsor a school-based program for youth
and parents and hold awareness-raising activities in the community.
At a local elementary school, the team will convey prevention messages through YouthLink,
an interactive multimedia prevention education program that educates and engages
youth in discussions about the harms of underage alcohol use. Parents will be involved
in educating youth about the harms of underage alcohol use by serving as mentors
and as educators in the Parents Teaching Prevention program, in which parents teach
alcohol use prevention in the classroom. The team will also create a parent network
to support parents’ efforts to talk with their children about alcohol use and other
issues. Finally, the team will organize educational sessions to provide parents
with information about the harms of underage alcohol use and teach them how to communicate
effectively with their children about alcohol.
To increase underage alcohol use disapproval within the community, the team will
help plan and publicize awareness-raising messages developed by 9- to 13-year-olds
and their parents. Youth and parents will create messages and help plan their placement
throughout the community, in venues such as local newspapers, radio stations, billboards,
movie theater ads, local buses, and school and community newsletters. The team will
work with local TV and print media and also encourage parents and youth to write
opinion pieces and letters to the editor for publication in local papers.
Community Profiles
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