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Your gift will support programs and services in our community that help prevent youth alcohol and drug use and promote healthy lifestyles, such as:
Protecting You Protecting Me
Protecting You-Protecting Me is an alcohol prevention program for students in grades 1-5 that uses high school juniors and seniors and adults to implement the curriculum.
Lessons and activities focus on teaching children about (1) the brain -- how it continues to develop throughout childhood and adolescence, what alcohol does to the developing brain, why it’s important for children to protect their brains, and their perception of risk of harm; (2) vehicle safety -- particularly what children can do to protect themselves if they ride with someone who is not alcohol-free; and (3) life skills, including decision-making, stress management, media awareness, resistance strategies, and communication.
The curriculum consists of a series of 40 science and health-based lessons, with eight (8) lessons per year for 1st through 5th graders. Weekly lessons are 20-25 minutes or 45-50 minutes in duration, depending upon the grade level.
All Stars Prevention Program
All Stars is a proven, character and goal-based interactive program to help middle school age teens avoid high risk behaviors. All Stars is less expensive than the average evidence-based program, costing only $54 per pupil for materials and training. The SAMHSA analysis estimates that All Stars has a cost-benefit ratio of 34 to 1. This means that All Stars can be expected to return $34 in savings through reduced medical and other costs for every dollar invested. In other words, it saves much more money than it costs to deliver. In fact, All Stars was listed as the single most cost effective school-based prevention program in its class.
Class Action
Class Action targets high school age youth. It's designed to delay the onset of alcohol use, reduce use among youth who have already tried alcohol, and limit the number of alcohol-related problems experienced by young drinkers.
Class Action uses interactive, peer-led sessions to explore real world legal and social consequences of substance abuse.
The curriculum consists of 8-10 group sessions in which students divide into teams to research, prepare, and present mock civil cases involving hypothetical persons harmed as a result of underage drinking. Using a casebook, along with audiotaped affidavits and depositions, teens review relevant statutes and case law to build legal cases that they present to a jury of their peers.
Case topics include drinking and driving, fetal alcohol syndrome, drinking and violence, date rape, drinking and vandalism, and school alcohol policies. Students also research community issues around alcohol use and become involved in local events to support community awareness of the problem of underage drinking.
Public Policy Advocacy
MCYAF works with local governments in adopting laws, rules, and policies that codify community values related to underage drinking and tobacco use, local availability of drugs, and parent responsibility. For example, we advocated for a beer keg tag ordinance in Des Plaines and the 24/7 Code of Conduct for students and canine searches in the District 207 high schools. We are currently working with our partners on proposed medical marijuana legislation in Illinois. We have grave concerns about the law, as written, based on its lack of controls.
Social Norms Marketing
The objective of this marketing campaign is to correct teens’ misperceptions that “everybody’s doing it”. Social norms marketing is proven effective to decrease actual teen alcohol, drug and tobacco use.
Key messages are developed based on results of the Illinois Youth Survey taken anonymously by over 5,000 high school and middle school students in grades 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 in Maine Township. The messages are tested in student focus groups at the three District 207 high schools.
Posters are designed and displayed throughout the high schools. New messages and images appear every 4-6 weeks. Normative messages on the posters reinforce information to students about non-use of alcohol and tobacco.
Information regarding positive and healthy behaviors of students is also distributed to parents, school staff, and community members.
To learn more about these evidence-based programs, contact MCYAF, get involved, and/or send your tax-deductible contribution to:
Maine Community Youth Assistance Foundation
2720 S. River Rd. Suite 128
Des Plaines, IL 60018
(847) 858-7090
