Langas Unites to Fight Drug Abuse
She emphasized that combating the issue requires a collaborative approach. Religious leaders, in her opinion, play an important role
Community leaders, civil society organizations, and non-governmental organizations have united to arrange a sensitization forum to assist in preventing the vice.
By Ann Kachalan
Drug and substance abuse is currently a growing epidemic in Langas, Eldoret, and has attracted various stakeholders to act quickly to stop it. Community leaders, civil society organizations, and non-governmental organizations have united to arrange a sensitization forum to assist in preventing the vice.
Clinton Kwagu of Rural Women Peacelink revealed that there is a new action plan. This initiative will focus on training certain members of the community, providing them with insight and expertise to identify, guide, and advise drug and substance-abusing individuals. The goal is to create strong, reliable support groups in the community that can offer frequent outreach and rehabilitation counseling to victims.
During the Langas forum, Jikaze Foundation CEO Hellen Kareithi raised a matter of grave concern regarding the extensive distribution, sale, and misuse of drugs in the region. She called for addressing the causes from the grassroots level, particularly the drug sources, in an attempt to curb the destruction.
Kareithi added that Langas drug abuse is reinforcing insecurity, as the majority of youth are committing crimes. It is also emerging as a leading cause of school dropouts among children, robbing children and youth of education and opportunity in life. Its knockoff effects, she continued, extend beyond the individual to families and destabilize society as a whole.
She emphasized that combating the issue requires a collaborative approach. Religious leaders, in her opinion, play an important role in the field of behavior change and must be included in the outreach effort. They can utilize their moral authority and advice for steering deviant individuals from bad habits to rehabilitation.
The suggested training programs will be experiential and participatory, with focus not only on awareness but also prevention through community-based strategies. The stakeholders hope that by empowering the residents with awareness, they can break the support networks for drug abuse and strengthen the resilience of the community against it.
By its multi-sectoral approach, the project is hoping to address the problem on all sides—law enforcement, education, community mobilization, and counseling. The unambiguous message of the forum was that drug and substance abuse in Langas would require a long-term collaboration, proactive prevention, and relentless commitment on the part of all sectors of society.
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