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Painting UNtwISted: The Effects of Underage Drinking

Hosted by: Hosanna Corporation

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Please briefly describe your Communities Talk activity.

The event we hosted was an in-person painting experience for youth ages 12-17 years. We invited the local police department, Broward Sheriff Office-West Park, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving to present. The youth enjoyed painting the pre-drawn canvases made by local IG artist @paintingwithrico. Pictures and video of this event can be viewed on our Facebook page or on our YouTube page.

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How does alcohol and other drug misuse affect your community?

Hosanna Corporation is located in an underserved community that is plagued with drug, alcohol, and tobacco use, among other issues. We love to provide services and resources to the community on various topics to help combat these issues, as we’ve learned that with poverty and a lack of resources, mischief and criminal behaviors can occur.

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What goal(s) did you hope to accomplish with your Communities Talk activity?

  • Reduce prevalence of underage drinking and other substances in community
  • Create an ongoing conversation about underage drinking and substance use prevention in the community
  • Foster collaboration between community stakeholders for continued underage drinking and substance use prevention activities
  • Create new resources/materials (e.g., publications, handouts, factsheets, videos, graphics) to support prevention of underage drinking and misuse of other substances
  • Improve policy/legislation (e.g., reducing alcohol advertising to which youth are exposed; instituting, promoting, or increasing alcohol compliance checks; improving
  • Awareness and enforcement of social host laws) to support prevention of underage drinking
  • Encourage community and local businesses to implement measures to prevent underage drinking (e.g., restricting or decreasing sales of alcohol at community events; conducting responsible beverage service training)
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What challenge(s) did you face in planning your activity this year?

  • Inexperience hosting Communities Talk activities
  • We hosted the event at our main office, so space was limited. If we had a larger venue we could have invited more people.
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How did you overcome these challenges?

We dealt with the challenge of limited space by having our guests register to make sure we did not overbook for this event.

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What are your next steps?

  • Host follow-up meetings or activities
  • Create new action groups to tackle specific issues raised during our Communities Talk activity
  • Expand our coalition with new partnerships in the community
  • Support new prevention policies, legislation, or social ordinances
  • Conduct research efforts to learn more about issues in our community
  • Create a public education campaign to raise awareness and/or change behaviors around underage drinking (i.e., create PSAs and other promotional materials)
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Which Communities Talk resources (or other SAMHSA resources) were most helpful for your activity?

  • Prevention-related webinars
  • Prevention videos, such as College Drinking: Prevention Perspectives
  • StopAlcoholAbuse.gov What’s New email newsletter
  • Communities Talk website
  • Communities Talk planning guides
  • Communities Talk toolkits
  • Communities Talk social media content (e.g., Facebook, Twitter)
  • Communities Talk Find an Activity Map
  • Nothing to add.
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Who did you involve in your activity planning, and who did your activity impact?

Hosanna Corporation’s long-term volunteers really showed up to help organize this event by connecting with local organizations that are very informed on underage drinking, such as Broward Sheriff Office-West Park and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. We used flyers to promote the event to surrounding middle and high schools to engage the youth in this event as well. Each youth participant was able to speak on their thoughts about peer pressure and drinking. Parents were also invited to this event, making the overall attendance total 30 people.

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Did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the planning or execution of your activities?

The COVID-19 pandemic did not affect the planning or execution of our activities, but we did have face masks and hand sanitizer available for all who attended the event.

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