DARE PROGRAM GETS BOOST

Beausejour Review - Crimestoppers invested $1,500 this week in the
youth of Beausejour and the RM of Brokenhead.

The group's generous donation came after Cst. Gil Berube of the
Beausejour RCMP made a presentation to the Beausejour Community
Crimestoppers board about what the Drug Abuse Resistance Education
(DARE) program does.

"In a nut shell it teaches life skills," said Cst. Gil Berube, who has
currently taken a leave of absence from the Beausejour RCMP to go back
to school to finish her education degree.

Berube is using her teaching preps from her university course to
continue to teach three Grade 6 classes the DARE program as there are
no other RCMP DARE officers currently in Beausejour.

Berube uses role playing, hands-on experiences, and a number of other
teaching tools to help the youth understand the dangers of drug use,
how to handle peer pressure, enhance self esteem, and teach conflict
mediation among the other skills included in the DARE program curriculum.

"My satisfaction comes when I hear the kids say, 'because of you I
learned to overcome certain obstacles,' or they say they're glad that
I took the time out to get to know them and to listen,' " said Berube.

"You can't reach all the kids unfortunately but you do what you
can."

While statistics about the effectiveness of the DARE program are
available, the one's Berube knows exist can't necessarily be recorded.

"How do you record the kids that are going to say no to drugs cause
now they know what the drug can do to their bodies, or the number of
fights that won't happen because now these kids know how to handle
tough situations or the kids from tough backgrounds who aren't going
to do something drastic because they know they have options and
someone cares? Those are the statistics that I'm interested in," said
Berube.

"There are tons of success stories about this program."

Funding for the DARE program comes from community-based groups like
the Beausejour Community Crimestoppers.

"We know it's a good cause. We raised the money mostly from our annual
golf tournament. Most of the money from that goes back into the
community in one way or another," said Al Adams, chair of the
Beausejour Community Crimestoppers.

Thanks to Crimestoppers, and some of the existing funding, Berube says
the DARE program will be able to continue for at least a couple more
years yet.

Cst. Berube will teach another two classes of DARE next term at Edward
Schreyer School.