VENTURA : Club Donates $9,500 to Help Fight Drugs

A rap song and a skit showing “eight ways to say no” were presented by fifth-graders in Ventura as part of a graduation ceremony Friday for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program.

At the ceremony, the Ventura Newcomers Club gave DARE $9,500, the largest single donation the drug education program has received in its three years in the county.

Under the program, three Ventura police officers meet with fifth-graders at Mound Elementary School once a week and also hold discussions with students in other grades, said Lt. Pat Rooney of the Ventura Police Department.

The DARE program “deals with how to say no,” Rooney said. “It deals with peer pressure. The whole program focuses on self-esteem.”

Among the ways to say “no” portrayed in the skit were “Walk away” and “Change the subject.”

Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) addressed the 116 fifth-grade students’ ceremony, which lasted an hour and a half, Mound Principal Paul Pierce said.

Students received T-shirts and certificates at the ceremony, and four were awarded as winners of a DARE essay contest. The winners were Rebecca Baker, Jesse Jacobs, Trisha Kirk and Heather Goss.

The Newcomers Club held a fund-raising auction in March for the DARE program, with participants bidding on “a trip to Cancun, a trip to Las Vegas, a piece of art, $1,000 security system,” said Sandy Ohlsen, a Newcomers spokesman. “This stuff was all donated from the people in Ventura. It was wonderful.”

Ohlsen said the club has donated money to DARE since the drug education program began.