Two minute catch up summary of what we’ve been up to over the Summer!

Well, September is here and the nights are drawing in. We hope you’ve managed to have a break during August and we hope that life continues to return a little more to normal for us all.

We are thrilled to be back to a full staff ready for the new academic year, with this September heralding Health Education including Alcohol Education being statutory, so we are already very busy.

Although we have always had a strong online offering with our youth zone www.talkaboutalcohol.com and all our resources available to download by topic or by suitability for age and ability online via www.alcoholeducationtrust.org for parents, teachers and professionals, we have extended the range of our online resources and are also able to provide one to one and group online training and support via Zoom or Microsoft Teams for schools and youth organisations across the whole country.

For time-pressed teachers we released a suite of 6 ready to deliver PowerPoint based lesson plans in July with full guidance and links to the games and activities embedded into the presentation. We have also spent the Summer creating a workshop, PowerPoints, films and resources for 18 – 25 year olds that includes cannabis for the first time, so we have made full use of the time freed up from not travelling to schools and youth organisations across the country during lockdown!

Added to this, the build began for our office, café and community space in July and it is progressing apace! All work below ground is completed and we are waiting for the timber frame to go up. It is now confirmed that, thanks to The Duchy of Cornwall and Low Carbon Dorset, we will have solar panels and an air to air heating system, making the building very green so we are very pleased!

As a charity, we have always worked hard to diversify our funding so that we are not solely dependent on grants to keep our services free. We have not been able to hold any community fundraising events this year, which raised over £40,000 for our work in 2019. We are, therefore, struggling to raise enough to meet the demand for our crucial early intervention work that protects young people most vulnerable to alcohol harms and ensures that all children develop the skills and resilience to resist drinking for longer than the current age of 13 and if they choose to drink when older, that they do so in a responsible way. Please do consider how you could fundraise for us and contact helena@alcoholeducationtrust.org if you would like to help.

Opportunity to pilot new resources for 18 – 25 year olds

A workshop covering alcohol and its effects, tips for safer nights out, the effect of combining alcohol with cannabis or antidepressants and issues such as drink spiking, consent, county lines and violence will be ready to pilot in late October. If you are involved in a setting that would like to pilot the workshop and toolkit, please email kate@alcoholeducationtrust.org

6 ready to deliver PowerPoint lessons for KS3 and KS4

Unlike most of our resources that are open access on the www.alcoholeducationtrust.org website, the 6 ready to deliver PowerPoints and lesson plans are only available to schools who register with us. This is so we can offer training to ensure that teachers are familiarised with the activities and interactive elements included. Please email kate@alcoholeducationtrust.org for more information.

Drug and Alcohol Education Conference – 5^th February 2021

As you may know, we were due to run this conference in June. This has now been postponed to 5th February 2021 and will be held at the Guildhall in London. This is a further opportunity to help ensure you are fully equipped for statutory Health Education.

This will be a day for professionals to hear from leading experts on the latest research on alcohol and drugs prevention, attend a choice of workshops on evidence-based programmes, and receive planning and evaluation advice for effective PSHE. You can find out more and book your place via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/basinghall-street/the-guildhall/drug-and-alcohol-education-conference-2021-why-it-matters-and-how-to-do-it-well-new-date/e-xdelep

The AET office, café and community space

The building of PiPs commenced in July and is progressing on budget and on time so far! The timber frame is about to go up and we expect the building to be completed in December, ready for fit out. We are thrilled that the pavilion style building will now have inset solar panels as well as air to air source heating making it very green as suits its setting in a park. We would like to say an enormous thank you to the County and Town Council, to The Duchy of Cornwall and for the generosity of so many charities and foundations as well as individuals for making this possible. To read more about our project, please visit https://alcoholeducationtrust.org/pavilion-in-the-park/

Will you help us fund raise to ensure we can continue to deliver our core work?

Like many small charities without a fundraising team, the next couple of years will be very challenging. First of all we’d like to say a huge thank you to the wonderful people and organisations continuing to fund us; we would not be here without you. We have minimised our expenditure during lockdown to endure that we conserve our funds for reaching and supporting young people but at present we face a modest deficit for the key services we support for our new financial year, which commences on the 1^st October. If you choose to support charities each year or are considering a sporting event, a run or cycle or an online challenge, please do think of The Alcohol Education Trust – do take a moment to look at a few of the hundreds of testimonials we receive via https://alcoholeducationtrust.org/about-aet/testimonials/ to see how valued our work is.

With warm and best wishes from all of us at the AET