Meridian seeks to raise awareness

A new community event will bring together various area agencies in an attempt to raise awareness about substance abuse.
Meridian Health Services will hold “Project S.A.F.E.” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Jay Community Center.
The free event seeks to raise awareness of the danger of drugs and provide educational resources, with its acronym “S.A.F.E” standing for substance awareness and family education.
Emily Leas, operations manager with Meridian Health Services said the inaugural event strives to bring more attention and action to the area’s drug epidemic.
“We have always wanted to do a Meridian event here and then we are also part of different community meetings and part of the drug coalition to talk about the awful drug problem we are having,” Leas said. “And it just continues to just get worse and worse so we wanted to start something we could do every year to raise awareness and hopefully educate families and then prevent this from happening in the future.”
The event will include a free meal, carnival games, a bouncy house and vendor booths.
To incentivize visits booths, children will receive a card and after getting signatures from four booths will be able to enter to win door prizes.
Leas said there will be 10 vendors, which include Jay County Health Department, Jay County Hospital and Portland Police Department, among others. Interactive activities such as “drug bingo,” drunk goggles and a possible K-9 demonstration will highlight the booths as well as access to informational fact sheets and brochures.
Leas said “Project S.A.F.E” is modeled off Meridian Health’s “FamFest,” a health fair the organization holds annually in Muncie.
“That’s kind of how we are setting it up, to model FamFest, except we are obviously focusing on substance abuse education,” she said.
Meridian Health Services is expecting about 300 people for the event.
“We’ve been at a lot of community meetings where people are talking about it and it just seemed like nothing was happening so we were just hoping to create something to educate people,” Leas said.