'Giving power to the community:' $22M drug prevention effort targets Calgary youth

Despite the outreach programs scattered across Greater Forest Lawn, Surafiel Kibreab has been watching high school students in his community fall through the cracks.

He says many are newcomer kids who come to Calgary after five to six years in a refugee camp. They get put in school according to their age rather than their ability to learn, and they struggle to keep up.

Local agencies are trying to help. But "there is a very high rate of substance issues, mental health, drop out from high school. It affects their mental health; it affects their confidence and makes it hard for them to survive."

A piece of the solution is missing. But now Kibreab hopes he's on track to find an answer.

Kibreab is part of a new, $22-million, drug-prevention program from the United Way of Calgary and its partners. Called Planet Youth, it's an approach driven by locally-gathered data that aims to bring lessons from Iceland to cities around the world.

It's about getting parents and community leaders all listening to youth — acting on that insight, measuring to see if the action is working, and repeating.

Here in Calgary, it's being rolled out in Greater Forest Lawn, Shawnessy, Thorncliffe and Saddle Ridge, plus there's an Indigenous stream.

The approach is based on the dramatic changes seen in Iceland.

Twenty years ago, Iceland had such high rates of youth drunkenness that people considered it dangerous to walk in downtown Reykjavik after the bars emptied at night.

So researchers systematically surveyed youth, ages 15 and 16, to understand what risk factors were influencing so many to make those choices.

Then they met with a coalition of youth, parents and community groups. Together, the group decided to address the risk factors by beefing up free recreational activities for high school students, bringing in a curfew and running campaigns to convince parents to spend more quality time with their teenagers on weekends.

Over two decades, they kept surveying teens annually to figure out what was working and build on it.

After 20 years, the number of Icelandic youth who said they got drunk in the past 30 days was down to five per cent, from 42 per cent in the late 1990s, according to the Icelandic Centre for Social Research and Analysis.

The researchers involved rebranded as Planet Youth and are now involved in prevention efforts in 16 countries and hundreds of cities. The team provides data analysis and guidance for teams in each community.