PROJECT CHARLIE VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

Ananda Bullock was 3 when she first smoked marijuana. Bullock, 24, didn't quit until a year ago when she entered Teen Challenge National, a drug counseling program.

A survey of 230 Teen Challenge students revealed 97 percent used marijuana. Seventy percent said marijuana led to other drugs.

Like Teen Challenge, Jana Jateff has a personal goal to wipe out adolescent drug abuse. Her weapon is prevention through education.

Project Charlie, or Chemical Abuse Resolution Lies In Education, is a drug prevention program for second- and fourth-graders in Cape Girardeau and Jackson schools.

A volunteer training session for Project Charlie will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 23 at La Croix United Methodist Church, 3102 Lexington. Volunteers will learn about classroom management and how to teach the 150 lessons, activities and strategies used in the program curriculum, Jateff said.

Every week during the school year Jateff and other program volunteers teach a 30-minute lesson that addresses more obvious topics such as drug information and peer pressure as well as low self-esteem, healthy relationships, boredom and curiosity.

Dawn Smith, a second-grade teacher, thinks Project Charlie is an effective approach to drug education because Jateff uses techniques on the students' level.

"Jana was really open with the students when she talked about drugs and the effects that drug abuse has on the body," Smith said. "She encouraged the students to talk with parents and teachers, and she didn't make the students afraid to question things."

When a little boy asked what he should do the next time his dad or uncle want to take him home after they are drinking, Jateff told him to explain that the drinking scares him, she said.

Smith witnesses her second-grade students carry what they learn during "Project Charlie time" over into recess and throughout the entire classroom day.

After learning about warm fuzzies and cold pricklies -- compliments that build up and insults that lower self-esteem -- "I overheard students on the playground ask each other if they had given anyone a warm fuzzy," she said. "Then they watched all week for warm fuzzies so they could tell Jana about them the next week," she said.

Brianna LeGrand, 9, and Lindsey Jateff, 10, both have had Project Charlie in school. They realize its purpose is to teach them to stay away from drugs, but it goes beyond that, LeGrand said.

"You learn self-respect, how to control your temper and not to keep things that make you mad inside of you, and instead talk to people about it," she said.

Lindsey thinks Project Charlie has prepared her for when she gets older and peer pressure increases.

"I have already been taught to say no when other students ask me to smoke," she said. "When I grow up I won't do drugs or smoke."

One Project Charlie activity includes presentations by students from Mid-America Teen Challenge in Cape Girardeau. Speakers use their life experiences to give the children an idea of the realities of drug abuse from the point of view of those who have lived through it.

"Drug prevention programs like Project Charlie and DARE help kids become aware of the dangers of drug abuse," said Jack Smart, executive director of Mid-America Teen Challenge. "We also stress that it has to be combined with strong direction from the home in which parents are modeling abstinence from those substances."