South Simcoe police have ditched the old D.A.R.E. program in favour of a more updated program that includes topics like online safety and bullying.
“Having our own in-house program allows us the ability to make changes as we see necessary. With the different issues that today’s youth encounter, it is important to be able to address as needed,” Special Const. Elisabeth Aschwanden, who co-developed the new program with Special Const. Karen Markus.
D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which has been used in elementary schools all over North America since the 1980s, was replaced by a new program called #BTRU, which is an acronym for Be The Real You. The hashtag was incorporated to make it more appealing to youth.
It aims to teach students about the importance of being safe online, as well as drug and alcohol awareness.
Aschwanden and Markus are part of the Community Services Unit with South Simcoe Police and have been responsible for conducting the program with Grade 5 students since it launched locally in fall 2018.
“The D.A.R.E. program is an American corporation and it doesn’t necessarily have the most up to date (information) with our communities. The community-services officers had a lot of challenges with getting up to date lesson plans, such as the cyber bullying or the social media,” said South Simcoe Police Sgt. Henry Geoffroy.
The #BTRU program includes sections on online safety and bullying, which were never included in the D.A.R.E. program.
“The #BTRU program involves some hands-on work, group activities, independent work and visual aids, which allows students at all levels to participate,” explained Aschwanden.
The booklet was designed to be customizable so that changes are able to be made to it as needed.
Geoffroy said there will already be changes made to it for next year’s booklet to include a section on cannabis.
“Cannabis is now legal in Ontario, but when we started the program it technically wasn’t legal, so now next year’s lesson will include a familiarization and component dealing with cannabis and alcohol,” said Geoffroy.
He said he is proud of the new program and thoroughly impressed with the new workbooks which were printed locally at The Bradford Print Shoppe. The booklets are vibrantly coloured, and the exercises encourage kids to reflect on their lessons with thought-provoking questions.
“The final copy is absolutely fantastic — it’s so professionally done,” he said.
Aschwanden said so far the program has received positive feedback from students, the school board and teachers.
The program has been so successful that other police departments are looking at taking their model and using it in their community programs.
“It’s really exciting news,” Geoffroy said.
