Protecting
You, Protecting Me
MADD National Elementary School Project
The
National Elementary School Project is MADD's latest nationwide
effort to prevent alcohol use by youth. The curriculum,
"Protecting You, Protecting Me," is an important
first step in the project.
Development
of the curriculum is designed to help reach children before
they have fully shaped their attitudes and opinion about
alcohol use by youth and their role in preventing it.
Research
shows that the risk for alcohol and other drug use skyrockets
when children enter the sixth grade, between the ages
of 12 and 13. To be effective in preventing alcohol use
by teenagers, we must reach out to and educate children
in grades one through five.
The
curriculum provides a series of forty classroom-based
lessons, eight lessons for each grade one through five,
designed to be taught in schools by teachers or volunteers.
Materials
are provided to inform parents and guardians about the
risks associated with underage use of alcohol and provide
them with resources to assist children in remaining abstinent,
protect them from riding with alcohol-impaired drivers,
and prevent poisoning from medications and household products
containing alcohol.
Project
Goals
Prevent the injury and death of children and youth
due to:
Underage Consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Vehicle-related risks, especially as passengers in vehicles
in which the driver is alcohol-impaired.
Supplement existing prevention curricula by providing
information to students in grades one through five and
their parents on:
The importance of protecting the brains of persons under
21 years of age from the biological effects of alcohol.
Ways to help children avoid the risks associated with
riding with drivers who are alcohol-impaired.
Curriculum Philosophy --
Zero Tolerance
The curriculum takes the stand of "zero tolerance"
for the use of any illegal drug, and illegal use of alcoholic
beverages by persons under 21 years of age, and any misuse
or high-risk use of medications and household products
containing alcohol.
Theoretical Base -- Resiliency
and Protective Factors
The curriculum is based on three complementary and reinforcing
mechanisms: risk reduction, resiliency and protective
factors, and developmental assets. Programs based on these
theories are found to be highly effective in reducing
risks for substance abuse and increasing the protective
factors that mitigate, reduce, or eliminate risks associated
with substance abuse.
