UN awareness workshop against drug abuse

According to a UN report, one million heroin addicts are registered in India, and unofficially, there are as many as five million. In order to address the issue of substance abuse, ten students of classes 10 and 11 got an opportunity to attend a talk at Tagore International School on 6th October 2016. School Counsellor, Ms. Enakshi Rai, accompanied us to the event.

On reaching our destination we were guided to the school auditorium. Present were many guests such as Ms. Richa Sharma, who is associated with Youth DSP and Mr. Charan Sharma from UNODC (United Nations Organisation on Drugs and Crime) along with a few other dignitaries.

The programme began with a song and a dance performance that was presented by the students of the host school. Post the dance performance, several students shared their experiences on being part of a campaign named DARE to RISE. The DARE in this campaign stands for Drug Awareness Rehabilitation Enterprise. They spoke of their visits to drug rehabilitation centres where they interacted with patients and counselled them. The student volunteers encouraged and motivated the patients to engage in activities such as dance and art as therapy to express and release their emotions in a constructive way. They also played board games during their free time.

While the students were sharing their experiences, a video was being played in the background which showed the efforts the student volunteers had made to improve the lives of these inmates. The work of the students was indeed inspiring. The speakers suggested that the audience be a part of such campaigns. In fact, they appealed to other Delhi schools to also undertake similar campaigns in their own schools and to formulate policies to reduce substance abuse among students.

Mr. Charan Sharma from UNODC discussed the recently launched campaign Listen First that guides parents to listen to their children more. It emphasised upon talking and listening to the problems of ones children as this would help them cope with their problems better. He also enlightened us about the rising use of drugs among young people. A couple of methods were described by him to address the issue. This included training the teachers so that they become more ready to talk to students about their problem and motivate them to deter their friends from substance abuse. He also spoke about the various reasons why young people indulge in drugs nowadays, the major ones being easy accessibility, peer pressure and family problems.

During the event, a cheque of Rs. 30,000 was also presented to an NGO that works for the upliftment of such patients.

At the end of the session, a pledge initiated by Principal, Ms. Madhulika Sen, to never indulge in any kind of substance abuse and inspire others to do the same, was taken. We later pledged the same across classes at our School.

Later, participants signed a petition to ban the use of correction fluid in schools. The session really opened our eyes and inspired us to work towards this cause.

Sirjan Kaur (X-C).