San Fernando : Group Gets Grant to Fight Substance Abuse

The San Fernando Valley Partnership has received a $1-million grant from the Washington-based Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.

The money will be used to create a Valleywide coalition of youth leaders to coordinate delivery of social services and to ensure that indigent Valley residents have access to health care, said Bill Gallegos, project director for the grant.

In beginning the new youth leadership program, partnership director Ester Hannon said she hopes to involve Valley teens in a wide range of activities to build communication and job skills, as well as create a cadre of young leaders to support their communities.

In addition to recreation and sports activities, youths would participate in programs to help the San Fernando-based partnership achieve its goal of reducing substance abuse in the Valley. For instance, Hannon said, if the partnership conducts studies on the number of billboards that advertise alcohol or tobacco products, teens in the program would help collect data.

The program will target youths between the ages of 15 to 18. “We’re going to ask them to identify the most important issues in their communities,” Gallegos said.

Other components of the grant program include coordination of various public and social services offered to Valley residents by nonprofit and government agencies, and setting up a system to ensure that poor Valley residents receive both preventive and emergency health care.

The grant was one of two, each for $1 million, awarded to the partnership recently by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. The other grant allows the partnership to carry out a three-year project on Blythe Street aimed at helping Latino youths and their families overcome problems related to drug or alcohol abuse, violence and other social problems.

For more information, call the partnership at (818) 837-7767.