ESTEVAN - The Estevan Police Service (EPS) recently announced that they've partnered with Community Safety Net to bring in more education and safety for local youths.
The organization will be canvassing to create safety initiatives for local children.
Estevan Police Chief Richard Lowen said Estevan used to be part of this initiative around 2015, but then it was discontinued. Now they felt it was time to bring it back.
"What it is, is they go to the businesses in the community looking for support. And they use that support to buy books and educational material that Estevan police distributes in our community safety programs when we go to schools or we go to any kind of interaction with kids, and that information is part of our anti-gang or anti-drug strategy," Lowen explained.
The organization does the solicitation for the EPS and acquires all required materials. All the money stays in Estevan. The community safety co-ordinator, who works out of Estevan, helps gather the funding and print the material. The Community Safety Net provides EPS with the books that they can then distribute. Lowen said the initiative is already underway.
"They've started and we wanted to make sure that people were aware, so they don't think there was anything suspicious about them being contacted," Lowen noted.
He went on to explain that it's usually a yearly project, where the organization starts looking for a way for the community to start generating some funding for them then to do the printing. The book they produce is developed for children ages 11-13 and has a lot of practical information on alcohol, tobacco, ecstasy, marijuana and other drugs. It also provides some drug-related tips, facts and quizzes, draws parents' attention to the warning signs of drug use, and supplies kids with strategies for staying drug-free.
Over the year the information gets out to the community. And in a year, they look at starting the initiative again.
While Lowen hasn't worked with the Community Safety Net in particular before, in his previous experience he dealt with similar initiatives and found such programs to be very useful in the sense of educating the youngsters.
"This is just a tool to get as much information to younger children so that they can be informed and aware of the drug situations. It's really just proactive as they grow up in the community," Lowen said. "We get a lot of feedback from parents, just appreciating the information and that the kids are aware of their safety responsibilities and that sort of thing. I get a lot of good feedback from families when they get information and that really gives them the tool to start looking at what they should be aware of."
To find more details on the community initiative that is designed to help out the local kids or to support the projects go to the Kids’ Help Now website.
"We appreciate all the community support we get, and we thank everybody for the contributions," Lowen said.
