Mt Roskill students find binge drinking solution

Media Release

15 August 2010

Mt Roskill students find the solution to binge drinking

A group of four teens from Mt Roskill Grammar school have won the first P3 Foundation Social Enterprise Competition for their proposal to host an educational expo on the dangers of alcohol abuse for young people in their community.

The team has won $1,500, mentoring and support by the P3 Foundation to put their plan into action over the next eight weeks.

Manasi Deshpande (16) said the team identified a lack of information as the main barrier to changing the Kiwi drinking culture.

“Our Facebook survey showed that teens scored an average of 57.5 percent in terms of general alcohol knowledge.”

“Our idea is to set up an expo featuring everything from a shock instillation of a car crash to stalls distributing the facts on alcohol consumption. We aim to raise the level of knowledge to 75 percent following the expo.”

Young New Zealander of the Year and founder of the P3 Foundation Divya Dhar is impressed with quality of solutions and the debate the students produced.

“I think the most effective policies to tackle youth binge drinking will use the ideas and knowledge of young people - the people who this issue affects – to kick-start a culture change,” said Ms Dhar.

“All the teams really honed in on their first-hand experience within their schools and communities to come up with innovative, effective strategies.”

Mayor Len Brown opened the competition by encouraging communities to band together in the fight against underage drinking

He said he was thrilled to see young people committing their passion and intelligence to solving such a prevalent issue.

Save the Children New Zealand in partnership with the Drucker Society of New Zealand will work together with the P3 Foundation to help the winning students implement their project in the community through the Drucker-in-High-Schools programme. The Drucker-in-High-Schools programme provides young people with a tool kit of management principles to develop new skills to make lasting changes in their lives and communities

The competition is sponsored by New Zealand Post Group. The P3 Foundation was started this year by a group of young professionals and works to improve the lives of those living in poverty both in New Zealand and offshore. The Social Enterprise competition is set to become an annual challenge focusing on a different topical issue each year.

Members of the winning team are Jason Walls, Manasi Deshpande, Ajay Ravindran and Ryan Puertrollano.

Five teams participated in this year’s competition ranging from Mt Roskill Grammar School, YMCA, Papatoetoe High and Mangere College.

ENDS

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