Seven SMART coalition members (Greg, Leslie, Casey, Suzy, Taunia, Kye and Becky) attended the national Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) conference in Kentucky, July 26th to the 31st. SMART members approved the funding of the trip with the stipulation that each attendee write a short report that focused on at least the following:
- A short list of valuable information learned at the conference
- Identify 1 to 3 ideas, from the list, that you'd like to help implement into coalition activities
Enjoy the reports.
SMART Management Team
6 comments:
KYE NORDFELT said the following:
I attended CADCA and loved it!
Here's a list of valuable information I gained at the conference:
1. I learned that SMART needs to reorganize into a more effective organizational structure. We need to organize workgroups, led by community members, that focus on important business functions that include as media relations, continous member recruitment, youth involvement, future funding, coalition maintenance, and strategy implementation. I believe SMART can become a strong activist group that reduces substance abuse.
Ideas I'd like to implement:
1. I want to implement the idea above. This will allow community members to employ their skills in essential business functions and help SMART sustain it's drug prevention efforts far into the future.
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to attend CADCA
CADCA was great! I learned 6 different ways to say "Louisville," so if anyone is interested...!
INFORMATION that I learned:
I spent a lot of time in workshops learning about environmental strategies and policies specifically related to alcohol. What exactly is an environmental strategy or approach? It means focusing on the place, the setting, or the circumstance where alcohol use/sales are happening.
There are four "P's" of environmental prevention: Product, Promotion, Price and Place. I would like to focus on price.
IDEAS I'd like to implement:
I would like to see the Alcohol Task Force focusing on an increase in alcohol tax. Increasing alcohol tax is the number one way to decrease use among underage drinkers. How possible is this in our state or county? It would take a lot of work, but I think it would help us see change in our community! I think it is very possible, with a lot of support.
I really appreciate the opportunity I had to attend CADCA.
I had a great time at CADCA! I saw a guy with the CADCA logo shaved into his head--that's dedication! Should we consider a similar hairstyle in order to promote our coaltion?
What I learned:
1. Working with faith communities is a vital part of our coalition's success. Many leaders of the faith community see substance abuse as a sickness, not a sin--this attitude should be addressed. Dedicated lay members of congregations make better coalition members than leaders, who are too busy.
2. We can be smarter and more effective with how we use the media, including social media to promote our coaltion's efforts as well as the issues.
3. Utah is "a pretty, great state"--as far as our existing liquor laws and resources for combating substance abuse. Other states are struggling far more than we are due to lack of support. We need to pat ourselves on the back at the same time we are looking for ways to improve.
What I'd like to implement:
1. A renewed effort to find and invite members of the faith community to join us.
2. Increased efforts by our media committee working with stakeholders from various media who will work to promote SMART, including a strong, effective social media presence.
3. I wholeheartedly second Becky's suggestion regarding the alcohol tax.
Hi, I attended the CADCA Conference as well and was very impressed by the 1300 other individuals who attended from all over the country and world. It was good to see the dedication and energy working toward good efforts.
I can also say that it is beautiful country between Louisville and Cincinati. We know because we got to ride in a taxi trying to find a flight home...
I attended the prevention 101 class which was a whole day training. Several definitions were given for what prevention is. We discussed the Public Health Model for Substance Abuse, which included looking at the agent, the host and the environment. We spent most of our time talking about the risk and protective factors and of looking at the different areas involved (community, family, school and peer/individual).
The next three days, I attended the core essentials class for effective coalitions. We went over a ton of information related to assessment, capacity, planning, implementation and evaluation. We discussed many of the thing that our coalition has already completed, such as problem analysis, and trying to get to the root causes and local conditions. I have all of the handouts and information from the classes, for those interested.
Thanks for inviting me to attend this conference. It was incredibly educational for me and very worthwhile.
The ideas I noticed that I would like to talk more about and implement also include involving more community players and also talk about how to keep them involved. One thing we learned is that if each member does not have a task/responsibility, they most likely will not stay involved for long.
Well, CADCA was just plain awesome! That's all I can say.
Three things in particular stood out to me throughout the various workshops I attended:
1. What a great group of youth there were out there! I was very impressed with them. A high school student from Richfield also attended the conference with us. I was very surprised to hear that she got donations from the community to pay her own way to the conference. Now that's dedication! It was pointed out to me in various workshops what an asset youth can be to our organization. Their knowledge of social media and technology is phenomenal! Why not take advantage of that?
2. Somehow I ended up attending a few different workshops related to social media. As Leslie said, we can use these outlets to promote our efforts and issues in the community. If we really want to reach people, we need to get on board the social media train (i.e. "Facebook", "Youtube", etc...).
3. Lastly, I attended a workshop on creating a "rock solid" coalition infrastructure. A couple things were suggested to improve coalition meetings. Setting up ground rules, having a "meeting monitor", and realizing it's EVERYONE'S job to police the meetings are all things that will help our meetings to be more effective. I know Kye has already planned to implement some of these things at our next meeting. I also realized we need to find ways to reach all cultures and backgrounds in our community. Involving some of them in our coalition would be a great start.
I would like to:
1. Get more youth involved with our coalition.
2. Create a coalition presence through different social media outlets ("Facebook" would be a great start).
3. Invite members of the community who are not presently represented on the coalition to be involved.
Thanks for a great opportunity!
GREG ROMRELL said the following:
My short list would be this:
1. Make measurable goals
2. Developing a better capacity. (Getting the people who know it and can get it done to the table)
3. Work through existing capabilities. (Don't re-invent the wheel)
4. Focus. (Decide the very few main goals we want to get done)
5. Look for Community Involvement. (Find out what is around the community and get our message out)
I would suggest our coalition work on: 1, 2, 4, 5.
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