Last week Mary, Belle, and I went to Indianapolis to help launch the Governors’ Spouses, Leadership to Keep Children Alcohol Free Foundation’s, READS initiative.
This foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit, organization launched in 2000 by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in partnership with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Its goal was to bring the scope and dangers of early alcohol use to the public’s attention and to mobilize National, State, and local action to prevent it.
The Leadership To Keep Children Alcohol Free initiative was incorporated in 2004 to help parents and communities keep their kids away from alcohol. Since then its mission is to support the efforts of current Governor’s spouses, both in their states and nationally, to prevent or reduce childhood drinking, especially among the 9-15 year old population. It is the oldest and largest organization of Governors’ spouses focused on a single issue. Currently, 75% of Governors’ spouses or their representatives are members.
This year the Foundation decided to have an annual “Read” and has selected “Messengers in Denim” as their first book. Hope Taft, Ohio’s former First Lady, is the president and CEO of the Foundation and was in Indianapolis to introduce READS (Reality Education for Adolescent Development and Success) to a national alcohol and other drug prevention and treatment conference.
After the meeting we had a press conference then went to the home of Laura Green in an Indianapolis suburb for the first READS discussion of Messengers. It was a busy, exhausting and fun day. We all slept well that night.
As all of you who have been following my blog know, kids who use alcohol before the age of 15 have a six times greater risk of having alcohol problems later in life. And alcohol is involved in more than half of teens’ deaths. Including those caused by motor vehicle accidents, other accidents, murder and suicide. It is the hope of the Foundation and the READS initiative that their efforts will help reduce these unnecessary deaths.
You can read more about the READS initiative by going to: http://www.alcoholfreechildren.org/node/378.
If you don’t read about this initiative going on in your state soon, call your Governor’s spouse and ask about her/his plans. And then don’t wait; be a part of it, or start your own READS group. You don’t have to be married to a governor to be a leader or to care about kids. It is all of our responsibility to help keep kids of any age off of alcohol and other drugs.
I am sure you all know that Messengers in Denim is available on Amazon both in the print and Kindle version, my website http://www.messengersindenim.org/. , and can be ordered from almost any book store.