|
|
Annual Report 2002 |
||||||||
Commission on Alcohol and Drug EducationThe Commission manages two Alcohol and Drug Education Programs, at the national and regional levels. National ProgramIn its local efforts over the past few years, the Commission has been focusing ever more strongly on the establishing and supporting of therapy and education programs for violence offenders. On February 15th we organized a Roundtable against Violence attended by specialists operating programs of preventive measures against criminal and domestic violence, or preparing for such programs to be launched. The group of over forty participants included employees of penitentiary institutions, and representatives of non-governmental organizations, social welfare institutions and local governments from all over Poland. The discussions focused on programs aimed at unlearning aggressive behavior and violence both of prison convicts, and of those who could be helped to change their behavior patterns before they are jailed (such programs are under way already in a number of prisons, for example in Olsztyn, Barczewo, Kielce, Wrocław, and Suwałki). Furthermore, former achievements and future plans for the Unlearning Violence experimental program were presented, the latter in progress since the fall of 2000 at the Radom Jail. The Roundtable debate resulted in several projects designed by workshop attendants, 11 of which were supported by the Commission. They involved a variety of activities, such as training for teachers, psychologists, social workers, judges, custodians, and supervisors, as well as psychology-and education sessions for violence offenders, among others in penitentiary institutions of Poznań, Kielce, Sandomierz, Pińczów, Barczewo, Olsztyn, and Wrocław. Moreover, we continued providing financial aid for programs under way in Radom prisons (Unlearning Violence), and in Suwałki (ART – aggression replacement training). In 2002, we organized a number of training sessions and educational programs concerning violence perpetrators: a Train the Trainer session (March 20th – 22nd), training workshops for fulltime curators (Kołobrzeg, September 26th – 27th), ART (aggression replacement training) Train the Trainer session (November 3rd), as well as training sessions for policemen, social workers, and local government servants (Mrągowo, November 14th – 15th). Moreover, the Commission co-organized (jointly with the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation and the Poznań-based Media Rodzina publishing house) meetings with William Bratton, the legendary New York Chief of Police Forces, then visiting Poland upon invitation by the Ius et Lex Foundation. In the first half of the nineties, Bratton made this largest US city the safest in the States, despite its previous record-breaking number one position in terms of cases of homicide, burglary, assault, car theft, aggressive begging, drinking in public, drug dealing, and every other form of hooligan behavior. The meeting on March 18th was attended by over a hundred top-ranking police officers and city guards from all over Poland, who engaged in a debate concerning the methods and measures of reducing the crime rate in Polish cities. The seminar was co-chaired by professor Wiktor Osiatyński, constitutional law expert, Marek Nowicki, President of the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation, and Steve Baczyński, an American prosecutor and counselor to Polish legislative authorities, resident in Poland for the past several years. The audience welcomed with particular interest Bratton’s comments on the necessity to bring the police closer to the local community of citizens they work to protect. The full-day workshop resulted in a list of postulates concerning all the indispensable legal regulations as well as amendments to police procedures allowing for improved police work efficiency. The year 2002 was the final one for the Commission, established at the Batory Foundation in 1989 upon Wiktor Osiatyński’s, later the Foundation Board member, initiative. The main objective of the Commission had been to introduce the twelve AA steps-based alcohol abuse treatment in Poland, and to convince professional substance abuse therapists to partner with Alcoholics Anonymous. During the period of 1989 through year-end 2002, the Commission organized approximately 500 domestic seminars and trainings for psychologists, medical doctors, therapists, and other specialists concerned with the treatment of addicts and their families, and – over the past three years – also with such issues as street and domestic violence. Occupational groups involved in cooperation included, apart from health care experts, teachers, pupils and students, policemen, prison guards, the army, employees of the judiciary, local government workers, university communities, and non-governmental organizations. Lectures and trainings were conducted by more than 30 foreign experts among others from the US, Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia, and more than 50 Polish specialists: medical doctors, psychologists, therapists, and prevention experts trained at the “lecturers’ college” operated by the Commission for a number of years. Approximately one thousand trainees attended all sessions, many of them more than once. A significant success of the Program lied in the establishment of long-term co-operation with the Central Penitentiary Authority, whereupon substance addiction treatment based on the Atlantis model was introduced to Polish corrective institutions in the year 1991 (Atlantis co-operate with Alcoholics Anonymous) and in 1999, new programs of working with violence offenders. A lasting achievement of the Commission is a handbook on working with violence perpetrators penned by Dariusz Skowroński and Agata Skorupska from Olsztyn. The handbook presents therapy methods based on the Duluth model, and introduced to Polish specialists upon the Batory Foundation initiative several years ago by Marek Prejzner, a Chicago-based Pole. The Commission is very proud of the Radom program (Unlearning Violence, in operation since 2000) targeting the rehabilitation of serious criminal offenders, and preparing them to work as instructors with a capacity for assisting specialists in unlearning aggression of other inmates during their own sentence. The program had not only proved feasible in Polish conditions but also more importantly, it had turned out to be effective. Since September 2002, six convicts with long-term sentences have been running education classes for inmates. The team of experts involved in this pilot project that implemented famous concept by professor James Gilligan, and American expert on violence, included: Iwona Stańczyk (psychologist), Krzysztof Linowski (sociologist), Janusz Rogala (prison supervisor). They were supervised by a psychiatrist, doctor Izydor Wysocki. The program may become a sapling growing into a permanent change in the Polish penitentiary system, which may begin perceiving a prison sentence as an option for re-educating and rehabilitating inmates, who shall then be restored to the society free of the effects of their previous destructive lifestyle. Over the 13 years of operation, the Commission published 40 issues of the popular ArkA quarterly, encouraging professionals to work with Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Al- Anon, Alateen, and Adult Children of Alcoholics to help addicts and their families. Support funding was offered for the publication of 28 books by Polish and American authors. In 1999, at the tenth anniversary of the Commission’s operation, the President of the Republic of Poland awarded the Cross of Merit to five most distinguished Commission collaborators who had helped graft the twelve AA steps-based treatment onto Polish soil: Claudia Blackburn (Pennsylvania), Bill Burgin (Minnesota), Stefan Johannsson (Iceland), Robert D. Gamble (an American from Poznań), and doctor Bohdan Woronowicz (from the Warsaw Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology). In 2002, Ewa Woydyłło-Osiatyńska, who had managed the Commission since 1996, was awarded the Tygodnik Powszechny weekly magazine distinction - Saint George’s Medal for “fight with the very Polish dragon of alcoholism.”
Regional ProgramThe Regional Alcohol and Drug Program operates in Central and Eastern Europe and in Central Asia. It is funded by the Open Society Institute, New York. Entrusting the international program to the Batory Foundation in 1996 had been a direct consequence of the long-term activities and experience of Commission on Drug and Alcohol Education. As part of the Regional Program, training is offered to medical doctors, psychologists and therapists working with addicts. Training sessions are organized in Poland or in co-operating countries. Most recently, co-operation has been developing with penitentiary system authorities in numerous countries of the region interested in opening treatment facilities for addicted inmates including Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Russia, Mongolia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Poland shares her experience with others basing on the work of Atlantis programs operated in several corrective institutions, receiving interns; organizing workshop meetings in prisons and sharing educational materials with foreign partners. In 2002, we organized the following trainings in Poland: training for abuse treatment therapy instructors (Warsaw, April 15th – 18th); training on treating substance addicts in corrective institutions (Barczewo Prison, May 22nd – 24th); a Summer School for Addiction Therapists (Konstancin, June 19th – 23rd). Moreover, our women specialists organized and delivered a workshop for participants of the European Women’s Union conference on Alcohol and Drugs vs. Violence in the Contemporary World (Warsaw, September 27th – 28th). Sixteen specialists from Belarus, Mongolia, Russia and Ukraine enrolled for internships at top Polish addiction treatment institutions. A therapist from Tajikistan attended an internship program with the Vyzdorovlenie addiction therapy centre in Moscow. The year 2002 was very busy for our experts. We delivered 14 seminars on treating alcohol and drug addicts (also inmates), in among others Bulgaria, France, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Romania, Russia (3 seminars), Slovakia (2 seminars), and Ukraine (2 seminars). We co-organized the 1st international conference on Reducing Alcohol Abuse Damage in Recife (Brazil). In the course of that conference, our program was awarded a diploma for outstanding achievements in disseminating state-of-the-art knowledge on resolving alcohol problems around the globe. Most active workers in the region from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine were invited to attend the Recife conference. In preparing for the International Conference on the Minnesota Model we are planning for 2003, we received two specialists from the addiction therapy centre in Soissons (France). One Polish specialist attended a conference on Reducing Drug Abuse Damage in Lubljana (Slovenia), and a symposium on domestic violence in Brussels. We published two Russian-language ArkA bulletins and another ArkA issue in Bulgarian. In 2002, two translations of Polish handbooks on addiction treatment were also released in Bulgaria. Throughout 2002, we provided partner organizations in the region with a total amount of USD 42,930 to support our joint endeavors. Such assistance was offered to organizations from Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Copyright © Fundacja Batorego
|
|||||||||
