We are an initiative made up of people from many walks of life who wish to play a part in making their parish community a better place to live. This is done in many ways. We first acknowledge and are so thankful for all the hard work, time and commitment that you and all your colleagues give to your parish communities, and we hope the seeds being planted will produce a community of youth, parents and leaders that will give back to the community, parish and church and hundred fold with being a healthy, vibrant living faith community.
We realise that to help prevent problems with alcohol and drug problems in our communities it will take partnership, with us all playing our part. This is the aim of our Initiative
Parishes play their part through many different events. It is our vision to support parishes that wish to help their community to respond to the prevention of harms from alcohol or other drugs; we also strive to enable people in parishes to know how they can protect themselves and others from harm of alcohol and drugs
There are many ways that parishes can play important parts, even from simple awareness raising of local issues of alcohol misuse, hanging posters informing of supports in local community, training young people with peer education programmes and parents with information, or playing bigger parts in the life of the youth of our parishes by establishing youth facilities and youth café etc, which can become safe places were young people can feel safe among their peers and community.
We also strive to remember that it is part of our call to be our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers, and a small response at parish level is a caring pastoral way of safeguarding our young people, family and community from the harms that can be caused by drug and alcohol misuse.
On a national level our Initiative will continue to work and advocate towards a ban on advertising alcohol in sport and at youth events. We also call for restriction on alcohol advertising on T.V and Radio. As the E.U Charter 1996 states “All children and adolescents have the right to grow up in an environment protected from the negative consequences of alcohol consumption and, to the extent possible, from the promotion of alcoholic beverages”.
