The Underage Alcohol Prevention Workgroup

This workgroup is chaired by Anne Olson. She is a lifelong forest county resident who has a number of years’ experience working with both adolescents and prevention projects. Other members are professionals and paraprofessionals that have a strong interest in the future of our youth. They all have experience with children or adolescents as well as government systems that attempt to prevent alcohol problems in different ways.

Some of the current projects include the Red Ribbon Campaign and Parents Who Host Lose the Most. These two campaigns run year round but concentrate on different parts of the school year with the Red Ribbon promoting in October and the Parents promotion coinciding with prom and graduation.  There are other shorter projects that pop up through the year that the members assist with like the ABC’s of a Good School Year. There a booth was set up to share ideas on how parents can start the prevention process at home.  One other program is called Every 15 Minutes and this is new to our area and will hopefully have an impact both on the adolescents who don’t use alcohol and those who have started.