BellaNet in Vilnius, Lithuania, 20-23 October 2011

WOCAD’s Board and General Manager, Information Officer and Project Manager for BellaNet visited Lithuania to participate in the NordAN conference in Vilnius on 21-23 October. The theme of the conference was "Empowerment. NGOs. Advocacy".

WOCAD was coordinator of NordAN’s Women's Section and General Manager Leena Harakat was its moderator.

NordAN women's section was initiated by WOCAD and the Finnish organization Naistenkartano ry through a joint exercise in 2006 to strengthen the focus of the gender-specific work in the NordAN network. The network includes women from six countries in the Nordic and Baltic countries. The NordAN conference invited participants to a Round-table discussion on Alcohol Policy in the Parliament, where WOCAD and BellaNet participated. WOCAD also arranged the Women’s Section at the NordAN conference. This was the fifth year that the Women’s section was arranged.

BellaNet held the presentation ”Gender Specific Drug Prevention-European Action on Drugs / EAD, BellaNet International”.  The presentation focused on the EAD-action that BellaNet has with countries such as Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Iceland, etc. A certificate of recognition has been presented to BellaNet International by the Pompidou Group, Council of Europe, in 2010, for BellaNet’s innovative work in drug prevention with the active involvment of youth. There are now girl group leaders with BellaNet’s training in all of Sweden's 21 counties and in nine other countries like the Netherlands, Belarus, USA and others.

BellaNet’s presentation received much attention at the conference and a number of significant contacts were made regarding continued efforts for drug prevention with a focus on girls, with a span across the Nordic and Baltic countries. In the presentation BellaNet showed several examples of aggressive marketing of alcohol and tobacco which is aimed at young women. Regarding this issue, the conference concluded with a joint letter to the media in support of this problem in Lithuania.
http://nordan.org/news-events/news-archive/nordan-conference-statement-to-the-media

BellaNets training concept provides a practical drug preventive effect for group activities, which many times may be more successful than the standard traditional information regarding drugs, alcohol, tobacco, addictive drugs and doping.