VENTURA : Grant to Help Fight Substance Abuse

Roberta Payan, director of Ventura’s Westpark Recreation Center, knows exactly how the Ventura Avenue neighborhood will spend the $4,000 grant it just received through a Ventura County alcohol and drug program.

First, leaders will organize community awareness workshops, to teach people how substance abuse is linked to the poverty-stricken area’s violence problems and what residents can do to dispel the lure of drugs and alcohol to the area’s youth.

Then, she will help launch a petition drive to get local parks designated as alcohol-free zones.

She will work to get a survey going on where liquor stores are concentrated around the city. If she finds, as she believes, that there are more of them on the Avenue, then she and others in the neighborhood plan to lobby City Hall to have a moratorium declared on allowing new liquor stores in the area.

Finally, Avenue-area activists are going to spend some of the funds on radio and television spots and billboards around the community, exhorting residents to find healthier alternatives to drugs and alcohol.

“We’re way stoked,” Payan said of the grant from the Ventura County Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

The grant was awarded to the city of Ventura to support programs provided by the West Ventura Community Pride Project. The grant will be administered by Payan as well as officials from the Boys and Girls Club, local schools and other area agencies.