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Resources for Youth

Prevention Resources For Youth

We have a variety of interactive prevention resources suitable for children and adolescents.  For more resources, visit The Partnership for Substance Free Youth in Buncombe County web page.

Media Detective

Type of Program: Media Literacy Education
Age Group: 3rd to 5th Grade Students

Goal: To prevent or delay the onset of underage alcohol and tobacco use by enhancing the critical thinking skills of students so they become adept in deconstructing media messages, particularly those related to alcohol and tobacco products, and by encouraging healthy beliefs and attitudes about abstaining from alcohol and tobacco use.

Program Description: Students are taught to deconstruct product advertisements by looking for five “clues”: (1) the product, (2) the target audience, (3) the ad hook, (4) the hidden message, and (5) missing information about the health-related consequences of using the product. The program uses a range of techniques that can be adapted to a variety of classroom settings and skill levels of students.

The Media Detective program kit contains the main materials needed to teach the program, including a teacher manual, poster flip chart, and CD with media examples. Individual student workbooks that accompany the activities taught in each lesson are sold separately. Also available is a comprehensive online training workshop, which provides an introduction to the theory and research underlying the program model and instructions for facilitating each program activity. Those who finish this training and successfully complete assessment tests receive certification as program teachers. Media Detective is related to Media Ready, a media literacy education program for 6th- to 8th-grade students.

Media Ready

Type of Program: Media Literacy Education
Age Group: 6th to 8th Grade Students

Goal: Similar to the Media Detective program for younger students, the goal of Media Ready is to prevent or delay the onset of underage alcohol and tobacco use by encouraging healthy beliefs and attitudes about abstaining from alcohol and tobacco use and by enhancing the ability to apply critical thinking skills in interpreting media messages, particularly those related to alcohol and tobacco products.

Program Description:  The program includes homework and extension assignments to further students’ understanding of media literacy and to provide additional opportunities for practicing newly learned skills. The curriculum is adaptable to a variety of classroom settings and skill levels of students.

The Media Ready program kit contains all materials needed to teach the program, including a teacher manual, poster, and CD with media examples. Also available is a comprehensive 1-day training workshop, which provides an introduction to the theory and research underlying the program model and instructions for facilitating each program activity. Those who successfully complete an online test at the end of this training receive certification of completion.

Project ALERT

Type of Program: School-Based Motivational Program
Age Group:  Middle School/Junior High Students

Goal:  Based on the social influence model of prevention, the program is designed to help motivate young people to avoid using drugs and to teach them the skills they need to understand and resist pro-drug social influences.

Program Description:  Project ALERT is a school-based prevention program that focuses on alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use. It seeks to prevent adolescent non-users from experimenting with these drugs, and to prevent youths who are already experimenting from becoming more regular users or abusers. The curriculum is comprised of 11 lessons in the first year and 3 lessons in the second year. Lessons involve small-group activities, question-and-answer sessions, role-playing, and the rehearsal of new skills to stimulate students’ interest and participation. The content focuses on helping students understand the consequences of drug use, recognize the benefits of non-use, build norms against use, and identify and resist pro-drug pressures.

Project Towards No Drug Abuse (Project TND)

Type of Program:  Behavioral Intervention For High-Risk Students
Age Group:  High School Students

Goal:  Project TND is designed to help students develop self-control and communication skills, acquire resources that help them resist drug use, improve decision making strategies, and develop the motivation to not use drugs.

Program Description: The curriculum for Project TND is packaged in twelve 40-minute interactive sessions to be taught by teachers or health educators. The TND curriculum was developed for high-risk students in continuation or alternative high schools. It has also been tested among traditional high school students.

Safe Dates

Type of Program: Dating Violence Prevention & Conflict Resolution
Age Group:  8th & 9th Grade Students

Goal:  The goals of the program include: (1) changing adolescent dating violence and gender-role norms, (2) improving peer help-giving and dating conflict-resolution skills, (3) promoting victim and perpetrator beliefs in the need for help and seeking help through the community resources that provide it, and (4) decreasing dating abuse victimization and perpetration.

Program Description:  Safe Dates is designed to stop or prevent the initiation of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse on dates or between individuals involved in a dating relationship.  The program consists of five components: a nine-session curriculum, a play script, a poster contest, parent materials, and a teacher training outline.

Second Step

Type of Program:  Social Skills & Emotional Competency
Age Group:  Ages 4 – 14

Goal:  Second Step teaches socio-emotional skills aimed at reducing impulsive and aggressive behavior while increasing social competence.

Program Description: A classroom-based social-skills program for children that builds on cognitive behavioral intervention models integrated with social learning theory, empathy research, and social information-processing theories. The program consists of in-school curricula, parent training, and skill development. Second Step teaches children to identify and understand their own and others’ emotions, reduce impulsiveness and choose positive goals, and manage their emotional reactions and decision-making process when emotionally aroused. The curriculum is divided into two age groups: preschool through 5th grade (with 20 to 25 lessons per year) and 6th through 9th grade (with 15 lessons in year 1 and 8 lessons in the following 2 years). Each curriculum contains five teaching kits that build sequentially and cover empathy, impulse control, and anger management in developmentally and age-appropriate ways. Group decision-making, modeling, coaching, and practice are demonstrated in the Second Step lessons using interpersonal situations presented in photos or video format.

Teen Intervene

Type of Program: Early Intervention Program For Students Involved in Drug Use
Age Group:  Ages 12 – 19

Goal:  Teen Intervene is a brief, early intervention program for adolescents who display the early stages of alcohol or drug involvement. The intervention aims to help teens reduce and ultimately eliminate their substance use.

Program Description:  Integrating stages of change theory, motivational enhancement, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, this program is typically administered in an outpatient, school, or juvenile detention setting by a trained professional in three 1-hour sessions conducted 10 days apart:

Session 1: An individual session with the adolescent, the therapist elicits information about the adolescent’s substance use and related consequences, examines the costs and benefits of the substance use, and helps the adolescent set goals of behavior change, including goals to reduce or eliminate substance use.


Session 2: The therapist assesses the adolescent’s progress, discusses strategies for overcoming barriers, and negotiates the adolescent’s continued work toward meeting goals.


Session 3:  An individual counseling session with the teenager’s parent (or guardian); this session addresses parent-child communication and discipline practices, and specific ways for the parent to support the child’s goals. The third session also includes a brief wrap-up conversation with the parent and adolescent.

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