ST. Croix youth and young adults alcohol initiative - the arch institute, INC

Will implement the samhsa sober truth on preventing underage drinking act grants (stop act) to prevent and reduce alcohol use among high school youth ages 12 to 20 in ST. Croix virgin, islands. The goals are to: (1) implement activities that support capacity building, such as implementing evidence-based community approaches and (2) enhance collaboration, cooperation, and coordination among communities, federal, state, territorial, and local governments. The population to be impacted by the capacity building on ST. Croix are school-aged youth, male and female, ages 12-18 enrolled in grades 6 -12 and young adults, male and female, ages 18 to 20. According to the 2020 census, approximately 16% of the population are between the ages of 12-20 years old. During the 2025-2026 school year, 2730 male and females were enrolled in grades 6 -12 in the public school system on ST. Croix. The capacity development needed is to build a coordinated community prevention system by expanding the prevention workforce, strengthening collaboration among prevention providers, engaging youth and parents as prevention partners, and implementing evidence-based/informed and community defined strategies that reduce underage drinking and promote alcohol-free norms. The objectives are: objective 1: conduct a needs assessment to identify the community norms regarding alcohol use among youth ages 14 to 18. Objective 2: identify, establish, and implement one evidence-based, evidence-informed, or community-defined prevention strategy to expand and increase ypci's DFC capacity. Objective 3: conduct community tailored alcohol prevention education and information dissemination through a social norms campaign and social media campaign. Objective 4: establish a youth underage drinking advisory taskforce as a part of the DFC's youth advisory council to provide stop program input from ideation to implementation. Objective 5: establish a community-wide underage drinking taskforce to increase citizen participation to facilitate preventing underage drinking. Objective 6: review the state performance and best practices for the prevention and reduction of underage drinking report and identify which policies, programs, and practices need to be added or modified to maximize the stop program's impact to prevent and reduce opportunities for underage drinking. Objective 7: create a prevention corps to reduce the negative consequences associated with underage drinking. Objective 8: support four (4) prevention corps members to become certified prevention specialists.