HGU FFAddiction (free from addiction) team (advisory professor Shin, Sung-Man, School of Counseling Psychology & Social Welfare) embarked on an addiction prevention project by visiting the town of Camansi in Cebu, Philippines. This visit of six students from FFAddiction team took place from July 13 to July 29. For the total of 17 days during the last summer break, students provided various activities such as Camansi family visits, addiction-related Camansi agency visits, addiction prevention education, addiction prevention theme song teaching, addiction prevention UCC production, and more.
 

    This addiction prevention project is FFAddiction team's five-year long-term project in the town of Camansi in Cebu, Philippines, with support from HGU's ACE+ GEM-II Program. FFAddiction team explains that children in Camansi become vulnerably exposed to different kinds of addiction due to their parents who are mah-jong or drug addicts. "The entire city of Camansi lacks education or activities related to addiction prevention. It seems to be in very poor condition with only one social worker being present," said Park, Cho-Won (sophomore, School of Counseling Psychology & Social Welfare) of FFAddiction education team.
 

    This project aims to ultimately help children in Camansi, who are exposed to various addiction hazards to find their life’s meaning and dreams on their own by providing addiction prevention education and campaign, facilitating healthy entertainment culture, and cultivating leaders for solving the addiction problem. This visit, as the start of the project, served as the first opportunity for FFAddiction team to build relationships with local children.
 

    As it was the first local visit, the team had to face some difficulties. Educational environment for children was very different from that of Korea, and the place provided on site was in poor condition. As a response, FFAddicition team reached children with self-manufactured educational materials instead of pre-prepared PowerPoint slides and audiovisuals. "Addiction was the life environment itself to those friends (children in Camansi). We had to be very careful with addiction education as they were exposed to drugs and gambling so much that the concept of addiction became incomprehensible to them," said Jeon, Ha-Eun (junior, School of Counseling Psychology & Social Welfare).
 

    FFAddiction team plans to execute mid-term and long-term objectives one by one during remaining four upcoming visits. For the next visit, the team aims to provide the children in Camansi a healthy entertainment culture to replace addictive mediums. Also, starting next visit, the team plans to attempt psychological therapies to heal the pain that children in Camansi suffer due to the addicts around them. From the third visit, activities to cultivate local leaders will take place so that the town of Camansi becomes capable of overcoming addiction on its own. "FFAddiction will leave (the local community) after five years. It is our final goal to cultivate local addiction prevention leaders so that the (local) addiction prevention activities continue even after we leave,"said Yoo, Hwa-Bin (senior, School of Counseling Psychology & Social Welfare).
 

※ Definition
GEM-II (Global Engagement and Mobilization II) Program: It is a program to participate in the global arena with a perspective of overall community development and a program to support global convergence problem-solving at a nation-level by utilizing major-related knowledge with a global perspective. Also, it is a support program of undergraduate-focused local development projects that solve community problems at a national level.

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