Milda Arlauskaite, Lithuania
The final activity of the project was to organize 5 multiplier events in partner countries (Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria). In Lithuania it took place on May 24th in Vilnius Night Hub where “Young Wave” have its office and safe space. Even though this event aimed at inviting mainly youth workers, it also caught attention of several governmental institutions like Department of Drug, Tobacco and Alcohol Control; Ministry of Education, Science and Sports of the Republic of Lithuania; Republican Center for Addictive Disorders. And maybe we felt more pressure because of that, but I felt like our goal to publicize our project and its results is being reached.
In my opinion, most important part of this event took place after the official presentation of the project, when discussion started. It was nice to have officials of the Republic of Lithuania and youth workers discussing on the same level about the issues of existing drug education and needs of the youth. All guests agreed that drug education in Lithuania is not the perfect one and needs to be improved. Even though some people are working towards the improvement and see the need of drug education to be changed, it also raises the controversial opinions of lawmakers and public. For a change to happen we need time and education of the public (not a surprise!). As we were talking mainly about the drug education in schools and possibility of improving existing programs, one of the guests, a street worker, raised an issue that “children that I work with in streets, they usually don’t go to school”, so at this point we need to think not only how to improve drug education programs at schools, but also how to make it accessible for children who do not go to schools. And here as one of the solutions we see work of youth organizations. It would be crucial to improve existing youth work, for example if government would fund that kind of NGO’s and we would be able to have more youth/social/street workers and peer-to-peer educators, who could get special preparation on drug education and how to communicate with youth, logically more youth could be reached.
What made me really glad, that in this discussion we didn’t just talked about the issues, but also discussed possibilities of the partnerships. “We all have to agree what kind of message we translate and we have to translate it all together”, said the representative of the Department of Drug, Tobacco and Alcohol Control.
