About 4,000 island students have responded to a survey aimed at helping county officials, service providers and residents to develop activities to encourage youths to stay away from drugs. Mayor Bryan Baptiste announced the results of the survey on Friday.
About 4,000 island students have responded to a survey aimed at helping county officials, service providers and residents to develop activities to encourage youths to stay away from drugs.
Mayor Bryan Baptiste announced the results of the survey on Friday.
Music and surfing after-school activities were among the top requests students voiced in surveys distributed at public and private schools, Marilyn Wong, an island youth and senior program specialist, said in a statement released during a media chat with Baptiste held at the Lihu‘e Cviic Center.
Various youth programs are in place today, but the new programs that are to be developed will support ongoing efforts to shape the youths of tomorrow in a positive way, Baptiste said.
“They will have positive choices (that could help students sharpen and strengthen skills and will allow them to have fun at the same time),” Baptiste said. “We are trying to be comprehensive so that the programs will be spread out through five districts.”
Organizations and groups will be encouraged to use the survey results as a guide for determining youth programs for Kaua‘i, Baptiste said.
“It is a huge concerted effort to create the activities and to get kids to the activities and to get buy-in from parents,” he said.
The concept will have a following, Wong predicted.
She noted that the initial assessment of the survey results shows three out of four children would participate in new after-school programs.
“We are trying for spring (for implementation of various after-school youth activities), Baptiste said.
About the same time, the county will launch a pilot program involving the use of buses to bring participants to programs that will be conducted across the island. Baptiste said.
The survey work is part of an ongoing effort by Baptiste’s’ administration to create programs that offer an alternative to using drugs.
The survey was distributed at Kaua‘i’s middle schools, Kapa‘a, Kaua‘i and Waimea high schools, Island School and St. Theresa School, Baptiste said.
The survey asked students to provide information about what they currently do after school and what programs they felt island teenagers need.
In a statement, Baptiste said the survey listed more than 25 types of activities, and asked students which activities they would be interested in.
The survey also asked whether they thought transportation needed to be provided to bring them to activities that are established, Baptiste said.
Because the focus on youth activities resulted from drug response efforts, students were asked whether they felt a drug problem existed in their communities and were asked what could be done about the problem, Baptiste said.
A initial review of the survey results showed 50 percent of respondents believed such a problem exists in their communities, Baptiste said.
“We have a responsibility to make our neighborhoods and communities safe for the prosperity of our children,” Baptiste said. “It is my hope that the island’s drug response efforts will over time be successful so that our children – not even 50 percent – will have to worry about a drug problem in their communities.”
Using the results will help government, service providers and residents “implement programs for our youth that will have a higher probability of success,” Baptiste said.
The after-school activities project is part of a four-part plan that the Baptiste administration initiated with the help of service providers and residents to discourage drug use by island adults and youths.
The “Kaua‘i Community Drug Response Plan,” which is to be implemented between 2004 and 2009, focuses on treatment, prevention, enforcement and community integration as key tools to discourage drug user on the island. The data from the current survey is being inputted into database system, and an analysis is to be done, Baptiste said.
Wong said, “receiving 4,000 surveys back is a significant response. The schools are to be complimented on their distribution of the surveys.” Community response specialists Bev Pang and Theresa Koki also helped in the distribution of the surveys and will help with an analysis of them.
