Youth Leadership Training for Alcohol Control

International Collaborating Center and Underage Drinking Prevention Program of StopDrink Network jointly organized Youth Leadership Training for Alcohol Control during October 31st – November 2nd, 2008 at Sri Patum Longstay Resort, Patumthani, Thailand. There were 47 participants included students and new graduates, age 15-25 years old who were leaders of youth networks from every region of the country who previously or currently worked with StopDrink Network.

The primary purposes of this seminar were to strengthen youth network and establish an official protocol of youth participation in alcohol control effort. This event was organized to develop youth’s capability to counter the alcohol problems and to realize the importance of alcohol issues and alcohol control policy advocacy at the international level.
 

During the seminar, nine guest speakers gave lectures on basic knowledge of alcohol, monitoring effort on Alcohol Industry’s activities, and advocating movement for alcohol control policy in the regional and global levels. Then, the participants were divided into 5 small groups and asked to create an alcohol control policy and project to solve the alcohol problem as if each group was a political party. Representative of each party made a presentation of the policy and answered questions from the guest speakers. One best project was selected and further developed under support of Underage Drinking Prevention Program to make it most possible for implementation.

In addition, four youth representatives were selected through a capacity building activities and comprehensive evaluation to join an international workshop on “the Prevention of Gateway Drugs- Best practice and networking among youth for foundation of Drug-Free ASEAN 2015” in Malaysia.

Seminar Background
Preventive effort on underage drinking and alcohol abuse in youth group is on the priority agenda of international organizations and private sectors. Many seminars and other activities have been organized specifically to counter this issue.
StopDrink Network has been working with several youth groups for quite sometimes and providing support to underage drinking preventive program. One of our goals is to develop youth network who can lead a campaign and advocate for a policy which will help prevent underage drinking.
Stop Drink Network see an important of youth’s capability development and training need to provide more experience to youth members in the network. Youth participations in both local and international events would be an asset supporting anti-alcohol campaign in the long run.