Addiction Prevention in Action – Compass 2022

The summary conference of the anti-drug prevention program Compass 2022 – “Addiction Prevention in Action” – was organized by the Mental Health and Prevention of Addiction Center, the Polish non-governmental organization “Fond Praesterno” and the Polish National Bureau of Drug Addiction Prevention. The pilot program was implemented in schools in Georgia, Poland and Ukraine in 2020-2022, the target group was 13-15 year old children. The project envisaged the involvement of parents, teachers and school psychologists in the program. Students, their parents and teachers took part in the interactive lessons with great interest and happily completed the tasks from the literature specially prepared for them. The participants of the program from Poland, Ukraine and Georgia introduced the experience and results of the pilot version of the project to the listeners. At the “Addiction Prevention in Action” conference, representatives of the center, together with other participating parties, talked about the experience and results of the implementation of the two stages of the project, “Compass 1” and “Compass 2”.

“The goal of the project is to prevent the consumption of psychoactive substances among adolescents, to increase the relevant competence of teachers and parents. At the first stage, 10 Georgian schools participated in the program – students, their parents and teachers participated in interactive lessons and performed specially prepared tasks. We trained school psychologists and teachers. The project and the preventive measures planned within its framework will continue, because there is no better way to get rid of addiction than prevention, it is possible to achieve that this generation will no longer want to try harmful substances with such activities among teenagers” – says one of the project leaders, a psychologist Eka Kavtiashvili.

“The preventive program “Compass” was held in our school, which was implemented with the support of the Mental Health Center and within the framework of the National Health Plan of the Republic of Poland. Our school psychologist, Anano Goginava, led the training of teachers and psychologists. Natia Kakhniashvili, the history teacher of our school, is involved in this project along with other teachers, who implemented the second part of the “Compass” program in the school. The involvement of parents and students was high, the communication between parents and children was especially interesting, these activities help them to be more open to talk about addiction topics, we hope that this project will continue and become a lesson ” – says the representative of the school-lyceum “Aya-Jesi”.