NDACC holds school parade

“Families and Communities Uniting to Build a Drug Free Belize” is the theme of the National Drug Abuse Control Council’s National Drug Awareness Week. The observance, which began on Sunday, featured a primary school parade this morning. According to NDACC’s Belize City Coordinator, Marlon McNab, their target group this year is children.

Marlon McNab, Belize District Coordinator, NDACC

“Today what we are having is the yellow ribbon street parade and the objective behind it is to promote a drug free healthy lifestyle in Belize. We are attacking the youths especially the primary school students because the statistics that we got last year said that drug use begins as early as ten years of age. That has moved the government and the Drug Council itself and we have come with a motivation and a drive towards working with this problem and making it better for Belize.

We have the drug prevention program inside the schools and we have a lot of pilot schools running this program right now. We hope that by the year 2000 we can have the program running in 75 percent of the schools. The program is about drug information and health science. We also train students to train their peers and we have the parents assistance program and we work with schools. If they do not have trained professionals we can provide that.”

Other activities for Drug Awareness Week include a Family Night featuring the Young Artists Association on Wednesday at Memorial Park, the National Drug Education quiz finals at the City Center on Friday and an awards night on Saturday.