Prevention against Alcohol and Drugs And Tobacco (ADAT)
Alcohol and drug addiction is a most burning issue in the project locations and it’s creating other social problems like child abuse and violence against women. One other recent menace is that the younger generations are targeted by several companies in the country. The Government policies on controlling this problem are working to some extent due to the directives of the new Government. RAHAMA continues to play a major role in alcohol, drug and tobacco (ADAT) prevention program in close consultation with the government and community based organizations. RAHAMA pays more attention in raising awareness against ADAT since this is a hazard diluting the targeted results of livelihood actions. Moreover, ADAT is a threat for protection of children and the safe living of women. We have targeted youth, children, women and ADAT users as well. RAHAMA has linked its action against ADAT with able partner institutions in each year. We select locations in the Northern districts and submit our action plans against Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco for approval of GAs/DSs. A series of community based actions are implemented annually to prevent civil community from the menace of ADAT and the focused groups are ; Youth groups who are undergoing vocational training. Volunteer youth groups, Families involved in Livelihoods actions and Children. We also associate with wider network of stakeholders including Government officials.
ADAT related actions involved by RAHAMA in Pooneryn DS’s division is basically centralized to 19 Civic groups organized by the officials under the directions of the Divisional Secretary, Pooneryn in the North of Sri Lanka.
RAHAMA in several instances initiated action to broaden knowledge on preventive action against ADAT for Govt. officials too. Thus, according to the request by the Government Agents of two districts, we enhanced ADAT prevention knowledge on several batches consisted by 109 government staff. In 2016, RAHAMA conducted series of awareness raising sessions against ADAT addressing 655 students in association with the Department of Education and the authorities of respective schools.Measuring impact of above action is extremely important. Education > Innovation and Research can positively improve the outcome of ADAT prevention of RAHAMA . Accordingly we have started recording some effective case stories on how people have benefitted through activities launched by RAHAMA and the respective Govt. officials.
RAHAMA has been conducting series of awareness building training on the harmful results of substance use and how to in-build life styles free from Alcohol, Drugs And Tobacco (ADAT) related involvements. RAHAMA also encouraged to widen it’s speculations on the ADAT initiatives due to the assistance and guidance received from FORUT Norway in the form of finance and shared technical support. Periodic sessions conducted by FORUT on ADAT with the participation of FORUT assisted institutions in Asia too, were resourceful events. As published by number of research institutions ADAT has direct effects on family economy, future of the children and adolescents . It is also natural that some of the younger generation trying to gain experience having consumed these elements which are available in distracted forms.
A leading administrative officer in a Northern district who did an informal survey on how alcohol and drugs becomes a menace in the current social settings and how this nuisance creates a negative impact on the peace, harmony and also on the marginal economy within families. Accordingly, number of executives shared their views with RAHAMA emphasizing the significance of the remedial actions. Objective of RAHAMA in this task is to empower civil organizations to follow well attended processes to keep away the membership community, their younger generation out from these harmful elements or practices. Accordingly with the consent of stakeholder agencies, more than 25 batches of adults, students, Governmental staff and youth representing academic institutions, civil entities were facilitated each year to attend training sessions with the provision of supportive action to practice the knowledge gathered.
Fostering inventive hopes to Resettled Families
Several researches embarked on by concerned agencies identified plentiful barriers being faced by resettled families including the sale of community based products. Sale of Paddy is a commonplace problem mainly due to the lack of storage facility and the lowest buying rates during the harvesting period. Consequently, farmers made attempts to resolve the problem of selling Agro products and they approached RAHAMA through the directions of Agrarian services officials and the Government Agent. After an in-depth assessment, RAHAMA assisted farmers to realize the causes and facts behind the problem and farmers decided to store Paddy for few months since prices go up during the off season. Accordingly RAHAMA together with the intervention of Government put up a Paddy store building with the capacity to store 400 metric tons of Paddy at a time. From that season onward farmers could resolve one of their long-drawn-out problem.
In other occurrence, a team of entrepreneurial women met RAHAMA to seek assistance to improve their joint enterprise of producing dry food . Similarly, RAHAMA directed this team of women in the village Nagendrapuram in Northern Sri Lanka, to strategize value added product with re-arranged market practices. Currently there are 20 members involved in the production in full time basis. Mulliwaikkal is one of the worst affected village during the time of conflict, In 2010 majority of the families returned to the village and started cultivation of short term crops. Yet farmers in adjoining villages were Paddy cultivators but could not proceed with cultivation due to the short of investment and the delay in the acquisition of land permits. RAHAMA could intervene on this matter as well and arranged a tri-party approach to accelerate the needed solutions. As a result, 90 farmers could attend cultivation in 118 acres.