Thanks to a $5,576.88 grant from the Nova Scotia Gaming Foundation, a unique problem gambling awareness project will soon be underway at a junior high school in Yarmouth. The project, called The Common Mission Coalition: Seeking the Intersect, was designed by Denyse Hines, an adolescent worker with Addiction Services, Southwest District Health Authority. Ms. Hines will coordinate the project, along with her colleague and project director Linda Coakley.

Throughout February and March, 2008, volunteer participants from grades seven to nine will gather to research and discuss issues related to youth problem gambling. Students from Yarmouth Junior High will spend six weeks reading literature, conducting interviews and watching recommended videos from Addiction Services libraries. The information gathered will then be turned into a participatory quiz show/drama production and presented to students at Yarmouth Junior High and Maple Grove Education Centre.

"The goal is to present 400 to 600 middle high school kids with valuable, entertaining, peer-led information about the consequences of high risk behaviours such as gambling," said Ms. Hines. "What sets this project apart from other similar productions is that the students themselves will be the developers and actors as opposed to professionals hired to perform the drama.

The Common Coalition project comes in the wake of the 2007 Nova Scotia Student Drug Use survey which states, "In 2007, 60% of students participated in at least one of nine gambling activities for money, in the course of the year."

The Nova Scotia Gaming Foundation plans to hold a public town hall meeting in Yarmouth this spring. The event will include a presentation about the Common Coalition project.

Founded in 1998 as a nonprofit, arms-length government organization, the NSGF has directed millions of dollars in community and research grants to support problem gambling prevention, education, treatment, remedial intervention and the building of the problem gambling knowledge base across the province.

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