BELLOWS FALLS >> Community organizations in Bellows Falls and Brattleboro were among the four in Vermont slated to share $500,000 in grants aimed at addressing and preventing youth substance abuse in the state.
Greater Falls Connections, in Bellows Falls, and West River Valley Thrives, in Brattleboro, have each been allotted $125,000 to raise awareness of the dangers of alcohol and other drugs. The grants were part of $86 million awarded to nearly 700 communities throughout the United States in Drug-Free Communities Support Program grants by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The federal grant program that has funded more than 2,000 coalitions and mobilizes 9,000 community volunteers across the country, according to an announcement from the office of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
The Alliance for Community Transformations in Bennington and the Burlington Partnership for a Healthy Community in Burlington have been appropriated $124,684 and $125,000, respectively.
Katelynn Venne, the program coordinator and lone staff member at West River Valley Thrives, said a portion of the money will be used to hire a new staffer for the prevention coalition. She also said the funds will go toward increasing the number of active coalition members (which can include individuals and organizations), providing new training opportunities for them and reducing youth substance abuse rates within the community.
“We are very, very excited about receiving (the grant money),” Venne said. “We have big plans.”
Some of those plans include continuing and extending the prevention coalition’s programs, such as Above The Influence and Active Parenting of Teens at Leland & Gray Union Middle and High School in Townshend.
“We spent a lot of the last couple of years doing mostly capacity-building and relationship-building stuff in the community,” Venne said. “Before writing the proposal, we did a really big survey assessment (of parents, youngsters, educators and other community members).”
There is a new program at Leland & Gray called Refuse to Use, in which students agree to stay substance free and attend some educational events throughout the school year in exchange for a pass to Stratton Mountain Resort.
“That’s something we’re super excited about,” Venne said.
She said the previous program coordinator, Julia Hampton, who left the organization last month, wrote the grant proposal. Venne told the Reformer her organization focuses on prevention awareness regarding alcohol, marijuana and prescription drugs, though the other grant recipients may also incorporate strategies to combat heroin and tobacco use.
Leahy, a former prosecutor, is a supporter of community-based prevention and involvement that these grants will encourage. According to his office, he co-sponsored the original 1997 legislation authorizing the Drug-Free Communities Support Program and has long championed the program as the senior-most member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and as the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Substance abuse leaves a devastating wake of destruction through communities across our state and our country,” he said in a statement. “It is a scourge that affects us all and will take all of us to face together, as a community. These grants are another step toward strengthening our communities to combat youth substance abuse.”