This is the fifth in a series of articles based on roundtable discussions on issues relevant to community coalitions from CADCA´s National Leadership Forum XVI, held Feb. 14-16, 2006, in Washington, DC. This discussion was facilitated by Cheryl Guthier and Steve Magallan, members of the CADCA National Coalition Institute´s Leader/Mentors, and offers guidance on how to engage even the toughest members of a community.

Why is it that some coalitions have a lot of involvement from a particular sector whereas others can’t seem to get any support? Is it true that some sectors are particularly hard to engage as coalition partners? Who are they? Are there techniques that have proven successful in eliciting support and involvement from the “hard to engage”? What are they?

Participants in the session began by listing a variety of sectors that are hard to engage. These ranged from teens to parents; ethnic minorities to faith-based communities; retail outlets to manufacturing and others. Three sectors were selected for discussion based on the number of times they were listed by participants.

I. Faith-Based Communities

Participants agreed that every congregation has its own culture and language that has to be considered. Additionally, congregations are often used to being autonomous, so the idea of working as part of a coalition may be new. Participants offered the following ideas for engaging congregations:

• Ask coalition members to involve their congregations in meetings or events.
• Approach congregations and build relationships with established groups such as Deacons, mothers’ or women’s fellowships, youth teams.
• Offer prevention training for clergy.
• Engage youth through leadership such as sermons/presentations on prevention efforts.
• Spread the word about meetings/events through weekly bulletins or regular newsletters/congregation communications.
• Start small—ask for meeting space or publicity—then build your relationships from there.

II. Youth

Youth are a vital element of any community effort to reduce underage use of tobacco and alcohol and/or use of illicit drugs. Among the recommendations that participants had for engaging youth in coalition activities, leadership was key:

• Enlist older youth to participate in programs like “Teens against Drugs and Alcohol” in which they travel to middle and elementary schools to talk about drug issues. This can be particularly effective when 9th and 10th graders go back and talk to the 8th graders.
• Ask for youth volunteers to serve on a steering committee for your local Youth Court.
• Conduct focus groups with youth as facilitators. In New Hampsire, such discussions led to the development of after-school programs in nine different schools. The programs operate two-three days a week with programs and activities mostly run by students (with adult supervision).

Additionally, participants noted a few basics for getting and keeping youth involved:

• Work with your school district to have youth participation count toward community service requirements (if these are included in graduation requirements). This can also apply to college students, who are often eligible for financial aid credit service learning projects. One great advantage is that many students stay on beyond their requirements.
• Offer food—this works well with adults too. Snacks add a welcoming, casual feeling to meetings.
• Utilize staff such as a School Resource Officer (generally a police officer assigned to the school). In one instance, the Resource Officer put out an announcement about a drug prevention meeting, and 30 youth participated. It led to development of a peer group.

III. School Administrators

It may be difficult for school administrators to admit that drug or alcohol use exists in their school or district, since part of their job is to portray the positives rather than the negatives. They may find that identifying problems can cause conflicts with parents or their school board. But these issues present good reasons for school administrators to become involved and when they see the positive results that coalitions can promote, they can be a tremendous addition to your coalition. Some of the suggestions that participants had for engaging school administrators included:

• Work through the Parent Teacher Association—they can engage school administrators through participation in a variety of projects or events.
• Show the administrators the facts—use local data to show the need for communitywide prevention efforts.
• Engage your local school board. They can influence administrators to get involved.
• Encourage publicity of local events that take place in schools—administrators love positive publicity!