Educ8 - by Liz Sloan

Educ8 is a one of Hallam Volunteering's five new projects this year. The project focuses on empowering children to make informed decisions by giving them the opportunity to learn about substances such as tobacco, alcohol and solvents in a safe environment.

Stefanie Chadburn, Educ8’s Project Leader said “I firmly believe that Educ8 is a great project which tackles a subject area which needs to be addressed in schools and I know my excellent team of volunteers are going to tackle it brilliantly”.

Educ8 has partnered with SHED, which is a local organisation offering support to young people in Sheffield in relation to substance misuse. SHED has provided an eight week training programme to six of the student volunteers to give them the confidence in delivering advice to school children in year six.

Altogether there are five one hour sessions that began on the 26th February and will run up until March. The sessions are flexible and fun, incorporating games and quizzes to encourage the children to learn. One of the activities that will take place towards the end of the project will be “the big drugs quiz.”

This will test the children to see what they have learnt over 5 weeks. All of the activities are kept simple and enjoyable but require skilful handling by the volunteers as the topic of drugs can be a difficult and complex one to explore and talk about.

The children are offered helpful information and guidance in an area that is sometimes ignored in today’s society and with children becoming more exposed to the danger of drugs and alcohol it makes a great difference when projects such as EDUC8 are there to make sure they have the correct information . As Stefanie says “They then have the confidence in themselves to say no and make informed decisions based around fact and not fiction.”