+ Atitude

+Atitude (Attitude +): Project established in several schools of Braga, with office hours and working sessions, working with youngsters from middle school, to create awareness for the effects of drugs and develop social and personal skills, in order to achieve drugs prevention.

In my opinion, this project is a little bit similar with Geração Tecla, but at the same time very different. As written earlier + Atitude works with kids and teenagers and have different projects that can be done with kids. Just the kids are different. Mainly, +Atitude is a bigger project, cause they work with several different schools and the impact is not concerned mainly to one special group of kids, but they are trying to do drugs prevention projects with all of them.

So let’s start from the beginning. What does +Atitude do in schools? Firstly, they have theoretical presentations about drug prevention. They also spend one morning or afternoon per week in each school, at a special office where students and teachers can come and talk about themselves or people they are concerned with and try to find some answers. What is more, they do some more non-formal education activities, like trying to show the kids that their free time can be better occupied with sports than with risky behaviors, by making, for example, a lot of different sport activities during the school year.

Another place of intervention is after school activities, like mentioned before can be sports or music, but also they have private after school sessions, where one volunteer helps maximum 3 kids at the same time to develop their study skills. Of course, they try to do it one on one so that the kid would get more comfortable and could better open up. I think this is one of the most amazing experiences that anyone can have. Sharing your knowledge with others and being that Big Brother or Sister for someone, who really needs that, is the real volunteering.

And finally, +Attitude is responsible for another project +Saúde –Riscos (More Health, Less Risks). This project is for academic festivals. Like here in Braga there is one huge festival for the university students that happens in May and takes place for one whole week. During that time, in the place of festival +Atitude has a tent there people can come in time of crisis. In the first part of the night volunteers walk around the campus of the festival, giving information about drugs and alcohol, as well as providing protection material. Later during the night they are dealing with crisis and trying to help people with, for example, panic attacks. And in the end of the night they do alcohol tests to prevent drunk driving.

All in all, during the whole year there are many different places where a person can contribute to the +Atitude and become not just a better volunteer, but also a better person!

Gi