An addiction recovery program in Sussex County in New Jersey has been assisted by students at Sussex County Technical School with the goal of helping create awareness for substance abuse.
A graphics arts class at Sussex Tech taught by Steven Styles has been producing marketing ideas for the Community Law Enforcement Addiction Recovery (C.L.E.A.R.) program.
C.L.E.A.R. aims to establish a cooperative system of specialists who are able to organize medical involvement and help ease access to addiction treatment. They offer multiple services including substance abuse treatment and recovery coaching.
Much of their work is completed at the Center for Prevention and Counseling, which delivers services intended to create addiction-free lives, emotional well-being, fiscal stability and secure communities.
Some of their strategies include providing client-centered therapy, networking with other providers and using proven prevention techniques to educate. They also are actively involved in the community by maintaining active committee memberships. Their organization is maintained through grants and foundation funding.
Katie Calvacca, a C.L.E.A.R. recovery support coordinator at the Center for Prevention and Counseling, indicated that marketing materials are usually created internally because it is often difficult to acquire funding for advertising since they are a nonprofit organization.
Due to that, the students in Styles class have helped the Center for Prevention in promoting their addiction recovery program.
Becky Carlson, the executive director at the Center, called Styles to determine if his students would be interested in assisting them again with a new task.
Calvacca then made an appearance in Styles classroom to talk about C.L.E.A.R. and deliberated methods that could be used to spread the word about their addiction recovery program.
She visually explained some ideas and how they were attempting to contact and help people struggling with substance use disorders, including using newspapers and social media channels.
C.L.E.A.R. had reported that 38 people in Sussex County had died from drug-related overdoses in 2017. They also highlighted that there were 146 overdoses where Narcan was administered by either an EMS or law enforcement.
Styles said his students were eager to help and thought the program was beneficial. He added that they started the projects immediately, using their desktop computers and software programs to develop their blueprints and create designs. The students edited their designs until C.L.E.A.R. approved it.
Francis Koch, the Sussex County Prosecutor, inspected the final projects on May 23.
Styles said that one of his students designed stickers featuring C.L.E.A.R.’ phone numbers to help people easily find their addiction treatment services.
Calvacca highlighted that, since the project is nearly complete, her team would like to find a way to use all the creations on social media. If a specific project is exceptional, it may be produced as a poster to be displayed, she added.
Styles said it was great to see his students’ willingness to help in any way possible and that he hopes his class will get more opportunities to help C.L.E.A.R. and their community.
Author: Robert B. Hayek
Robert B Hayek is a reporter for Addiction Now and covers features and local spotlight stories. He previously worked for Fox Sports as a production assistant as well as a writer and reporter for an online website called Real Talk Sports Network. He has lived in Southern California his entire life, is a lover of books and writing and also surfs. Contact Robert at roberth@addictionnow.com
