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UK Youth in partnership with Drinkaware will be holding a ‘Young People and Alcohol’ Conference and launching a new Drinkaware Challenge programme to tackle alcohol misuse amongst young people and underage binge drinking.

 
According to the Government’s new alcohol strategy ‘Safe, Sensible, Social’, 30% of young men and 22% of young women aged 16-24 drink at a harmful level[1]; while 44% of young people aged 16-24 are more likely to binge drink than any other age group.[2] As well as having an adverse effect on young people’s health, there are also strong links between alcohol consumption and other risk factors such as teenage pregnancy, youth offending, and exclusion.

UK Youth says that non-formal education approaches can enable young people to question their attitudes to alcohol use; and boost their self-esteem and develop essential life skills so that they are equipped to deal with the pressures that may influence them to drink excessively. The Drinkaware Challenge programme will strengthen Government initiatives in combating alcohol misuse by taking on a holistic, non-formal approach to raising awareness of alcohol use and misuse.

The Drinkaware Challenge will empower young people to influence alcohol education themselves and will present them with the challenge of how to change attitudes and behaviour. The programme will also provide national accreditation via the Youth Achievement Awards, which will formally recognise young people’s learning and achievements. UK Youth will launch the Drinkaware Challenge programme and explore new and innovative methods of engaging young people in non-formal alcohol education at the ‘Young People and Alcohol’ conference on 21 June 2007.

For more information, please visit www.ukyouth.org.

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Sources

[1] ‘Safe, Sensible, Social: Next Steps in National Alcohol Strategy’ by HM Government (June 2007) [2] Ibid.

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Unknown, 10 May 2012.