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Date: 3/15/2023
BELCHERTOWN — At its recent meeting on March 2, BOAT officially changed its name to Belchertown Overcoming Adversity Together to broaden its committees outreach.
The committee changed its name after receiving a grant and joined forces with the Drug Free Communities (DFC) program.
DFC is a federal support program that has provided grant awards to community-based coalitions addressing youth substance use since its first appropriated funding in fiscal year 1998.
BOAT is trying to do its part to educate members of the community on the dangers of drug use and prevent those from abusing.
The purpose of BOAT is “prevention, recovery and treatment” surrounding drug use, according to Jill Rossi and Kris Hoag who are members of the committee.
Rossi said, “We encourage people within the community to get involved. We want to bring awareness to the issues to get some traction on prevention, recovery and harm reduction. It is important to fight against stigma.”
In 2016, the committee was known as Belchertown Opioid Awareness Task Force before changing to Belchertown Overcoming Addiction Together in 2019.
“The first name was focused on opioid addiction, but we wanted to broaden it. We wanted to be more exclusive of the prevention part of BOAT and extend it to all drugs and mental health,” Hoag added.
Hoag is also the programs director of DFC and a part of Belchertown schools’ focus on youth prevention.
Belchertown Understanding Obstacles in Youth (BUOY) was another prevention arm in town but the two committees decided to merge to be “a united front and work together towards a common goal of keeping our community safe,” Hoag said.
Hoag added, “We were always in the same boat, and we want people to know because we have plenty of events coming up.”
Rossi mentioned the committee tries to get their name in the community as much as possible by hosting and sponsoring multiple events.
At one such event, Chris and Kathi Sullivan from Sullivan’s Message will speak at Belchertown High School on April 11 about alcohol awareness and the importance of making good choices. BOAT will also sponsor an Umbrella of Wellness fair on the Town Common on May 4.
BOAT collaborates with multiple community organizations and has been trying to develop new ways to get its message out to the broader community.
Other events that will take place this year include an Overdose Awareness Day vigil, drug take back days, Narcan distribution and youth mental health first aid.
Hoag said, “For drug take back day, the sheriff’s department comes and collects any medication from people, and we take the boxes to dispose of them. When it comes to youth mental first aid, we trained about 40 teachers so far within the district. This is to help adults who work with youths of the signs of any sort of crisis going on.”
Hoag added that they will also be working with the Senior Center and library to conduct a safe medication storage training to teach people how to properly store their medications in their homes to hide it from visitors who may be struggling with addiction.
BOAT also does its part to work with tobacco retailers in town.
Hoag said, “We worked with them for a year to make sure they are in compliance with the Massachusetts tobacco laws to deter youth from having access to buy nicotine products underage.”
Hoag added that zero percent of the stores were in compliance with the law but provided them the with a tool kit, packet, showed them a video on proper identification and signage to be up to date.
After that, 100 percent of those businesses complied, and BOAT sent somebody in to do a purchase survey check.
A purchase survey check occurs when a 21-year-old who may look young is sent in to purchase a product and make sure the business is carding them.
Hoag said, “Because of the work that we did, we reduced access to tobacco products to our youth by 3 percent in a year.”
BOAT’s hard work has not gone unnoticed.
The committee received a Blue Ribbon award from the DFC which goes to the top 15 coalitions in the country out of 5,000.