FY 2003 Drug Free Communities Support Program Application for Continuation Funding

R. E. Thomason Hospital is the fiscal agent for the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition. The coalition was formed to provide a forum for dialogue and collaboration among individuals and between agencies that work with the at-risk youth population in the target area near El Paso, Texas. This urban area has a population of 717,211 that is predominately Hispanic. The two goals of the coalition are to: 1) reduce alcohol and drug use and associated behavior problems among school-aged youth; and 2) strengthen the community coalition. To achieve these goals, the coalition will implement the following strategies:
1) increase and strengthen family management skills by providing parenting classes and communications skills-building classes for the youth and their parents;
2) increase youth resiliency through youth programming/activities focused on drug awareness and on the development of effective peer, team, and communication skills;
3) plan and execute a full-scale recruitment campaign targeting individuals in the community and hosting media and information dissemination sessions with identified key-stakeholders;
4) raise the community consciousness on the correlation between youth substance abuse and youth involvement in the juvenile justice system;
5) conduct educational training sessions focusing on promoting awareness while identifying, defining, and/or re-evaluating the community needs;
6) provide a forum for the dissemination of information to youth and community leaders regarding drug abuse prevention, at-risk behavior patterns, and safe/drug-free community initiatives; and
7) expand the Bi-National model by continuing meetings and focus groups with Mexican counterparts.CA/NCF