RuralMurals© Project
Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Philosophy

The RuralMurals© Project is designed to strengthen the capacity of the community to build youth resiliency and assets, and to support youth in building assets by offering learning opportunities in social competence, teamwork and autonomy, and sense of meaning and purpose. Through RuralMurals©, youth teams work with professional muralists to plan, create and display art murals depicting youth development and/or prevention themes. For the past six years, RuralMurals© has funded thirty-one mural projects in all regions in Mendocino County. The Asset Building Coalition provides vision, direction, and coordination for the mural project, as well as working with youth serving organizations and the Mendocino County Policy Council on Children and Youth to organize trainings in asset building principles and to promote and advocate for asset-friendly policies and procedures in county agencies and organizations.

During the fifth year of the project, RuralMurals© broadened its scope to carry out environmental strategies designed to reach a much larger number of youth with prevention messages.

Current research on healthy human development clearly indicates the effectiveness of a positive, strength-based approach over a deficit or risk-focused, 'fix-the-kids' model. The Search Institute (www.searchinstitute.org) has designed and refined a framework of developmental assets for youth. This framework identifies forty critical factors for optimal growth and development and the important roles that families, schools, and communities play in shaping youth peoples lives. The Developmental Assets paradigm provides powerful support for the asset-building/youth development approach. The Search Institute's long-term studies of human resilience in the face of risk send a clear message that youth with access to assets are more apt to develop personal and professional qualities that lead to their success as adults. Hence, youth are less apt to engage in risky behaviors, including drug and alcohol abuse. The Search Institute.s research is borne out of recent reports from the California Healthy Kids Survey, which also found a strong correlation between high numbers of internal and external assets in a child.s life and low incidence of risky behavior, including substance abuse.

Environmental Prevention
Environmental Prevention is aimed at changing the physical and social conditions that affect an individuals exposure, influence and risks to alcohol and drugs. Some examples of environmental prevention are limiting drug availability; monitoring advertising, and media portrayals of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use. Other strategies could include enforcing existing drug laws, making drug use more difficult in neighborhoods, and providing alternate transportation to intoxicated drivers. These strategies are based on the premise that substance use is a social behavior heavily influenced by the environment in which people live. Prevention efforts must address the conditions that give rise to problematic substance use. Environmental prevention must be tailored to the unique situation in which it is implemented.
PREVENTION-THEMED MURALS will maximize the prevention effect of RuralMurals©.
The project requires:

1. that each grantee articulate a specific prevention theme for their proposed mural.
2. that each team participate in a one-hour interactive prevention presentation, provided at your site by an AODP Prevention Specialist.
3. muralists and coordinators have the requisite communication skills and ability to engage youth in teachable moments when substance-related issues arise in the course of the mural work.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE includes prevention of binge drinking, marijuana, tobacco and other drug use. It is our goal to increase peers perception that alcohol and other drugs cause harm. Social Marketing is marketing designed to sell healthy behavior by understanding:

1. What behavior the person is being asked to change.
2. What the person is willing to give-up in order to change their behavior.
3. How and where information about this change reaches the consumer.
4. How information about the behavior change is disseminated.

The goal of our projects social marketing is to make healthy, drug and alcohol free lifestyles attractive. Social marketing is promoted to the public with persuasive messages sent through the media that are popular with the target audience and is continually refined on the basis of consumer feedback. At-Risk Youth AODP has adopted the following definition of at-risk youth: Young people who engage in problem behaviors are sometimes referred to as "at risk." These youth often come from harmful living situations or have been unduly exposed to other destructive environments or influences. Though these youth have many strengths, they often adopt attitudes and behaviors that tend to get in their way and make the attainment of success and personal happiness more difficult. For many of these young people, negative outcomes include dropping out of school, teen pregnancy, drug/alcohol abuse, gang activity, violence and crime.