Leveraging Funds and Developing Consortia Are the Norm

Funds from the SDFSC program are used to recruit partners who commit additional resources and manpower to make programs optimally effective for their communities. This program has historically been a catalyst for community involvement, volunteerism and the leveraging of funding from other sources to address drug and violence prevention and intervention throughout the U.S.

Leveraging Funds

Developing Consortia

LEAs receiving a small amount SDFSC funds typically develop consortia to pool their resources to provide optimally effective programs and services. For example, the CESA 8 Drug Free Schools Consortium in Wisconsin pooled their SDFSC funds and realized the following collective successes that are attributable directly to SDFSC funding:

• 1,274 Educators/Administrators have been trained in alcohol, tobacco and violence prevention strategies;
• 7,400 student peer mentors have been trained via CESA 8 Rural Middle/High School Teen Institutes and Related Youth Training/Awareness Days;
• 814 Programs have been offered in 135 communities centering on parent trainings relating to alcohol, tobacco, other drugs and violence prevention;
• The creation of the CESA 8/Viterbo University Rural Masters in Education with an ATOD/ Violence Prevention emphasis (55 Master Degrees conferred);
• The creation of two online Pre K-12 Rural Traffic Safety /ATOD and Violence Prevention curriculum (over 420,000 visits to these websites);
• The creation of six rural county-wide youth/adult broad based substance abuse and violence prevention partnerships. Over the past 19 years these partnerships have involved over 2,100 youth and adults, representing rural business, community agencies and schools, law enforcement and faith communities.

CESA 8 Drug Free Schools Consortium Outcomes

A 10.2% increase (34.6% rate of change) in youth who DO NOT drink alcohol before age 14, from 29.5% in 2005 to 39.7% in 2008, as measured by the Wisconsin Youth Risk and Behavior Study.

CESA 8 Drug Free Schools Consortium Outcomes

An 11.2% reduction (17.3% rate of change) in the number of youth reporting binge drinking in the past 30 days, from 64.9% in 2006 to 53.7% in 2008, as measured by
the Wisconsin Youth Risk and Behavior Study.