Mission Hugs Not Drugs

Annika Rose (junior, right)- Annika is good under pressure, and helps when the group comes across issues. She is passionate about helping people who are recovering from addiction, and wants to take action to prevent more lives being lost from this disease.

Avery Culver (junior, middle)- Avery is dedicated, organized, and believes in taking action and helping others. She is reliable and focused on accomplishing the group's goal of spreading awareness about the dangers of substance abuse to her peers.

Isabela Rahim (junior, left)- Isabela is a strong public speaker and good with communication. She is organized and a teamplayer. As well, she knows the horrific effects substance abuse can have on people, families, and communities.

Why we chose purple and silver: Purple and silver are the colors representing International Overdose Awareness Day (IOAD). Silver is the awareness color for drug overdose (fatal or nonfatal), and purple is the awareness color for opioid addiction.

Community Need

Currently, this issue is very prevalent in our society as more and more people are being introduced to substances earlier. We believe this issue does not get as much attention as it needs especially in education. We want to involve our community in this topic as we seek to solve this problem. Now, during COVID, this issue is especially dangerous, because rehabilitation centers have had to limit their capacity, if they hadn't already closed. Even though there are many restrictions and we can't physically come together, we want our community to be as close as ever to come together to solve this issue.

Mission Hugs Not Drugs Community Needs Pitch

Here is a presentation we put together to present to our class introducing our topic around the dangers of substance abuse.

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Here is our HCAT Interview about our project!

Our Community Partnership

We chose the New England Recovery Center due to the fact that they are very personal with their patients and cater directly to their needs. They offer many cutting-edge approaches to recovery and continue their personal care. They are local and therefore very easy to communicate with as well as easy to get our donation to. We wanted to pick a small center/organization so that our donation will cause a bigger impact for them, especially during these COVID times.

https://www.newenglandrecoverycenter.org/

Our Goals

We want to build awareness about the severity of drug and alcohol abuse within our community. Our project is to educate our peers and inspire them to take their own action against substance abuse. By partnering with a local recovery center, we hope to have a speaker talk to students in order to educate them about the harms and dangers of substance abuse. Freshman are the most impressionable grade as they have just started high school, so they are our target audience. As well, we want to fundraise to donate to the recovery center so that those recovering have warm clothes for the winter-- our current goal is $1500.

Our Progress

Lisa, the speaker from the New England Recovery Center. presented to two freshman wellness classes on January 13. Here is the link to Lisa's presentation:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZkBkty_u9bir8rYwS6dBQD-62KC7I3DX/view

In total, we raised $1,355.27. We used around $500 of this amount to purchase winter clothes such as jackets, sweatshirts, hats, and gloves, which we dropped to the NERC on January 15. In addition to the clothes, we donated the remainder of the money that we raised on a check.

We have also decided to continue our work with the Holliston Drug and Alcohol Coalition. We are running the social media accounts through Instagram and Facebook, and we will become the youth leaders for the coalition.

Candle Drive

We organized a candle drive that was held until November 11th to honor all veterans on Veteran's Day. We sold around 130 candles and made over $400. Unfortunately, many veterans that come back from war suffer from PTSD and end up turning to substances. By connecting these two topics, we hoped to shed light on this issue.

Local Business Raffle

We held a Local Business Raffle that supports local businesses-- especially necessary during these times where small, local businesses have been hit hard. We received over $700 in donations in the form of gift cards or items/services. We separated everything into five baskets and drew the winners virtually on December 15th. The baskets are pictured below (not everything in the basket is pictured). It was extremely successful and made over $700- thank you to everyone who participated!