Yesterday I met at the offices of SJI as part of the working group for Thirst for Life.

Thirst for Life is an idea from Andy Frost with the aim of raising awareness of the effects of alcohol abuse. The day before going to the meeting this weeks edition of Children Now which outlined the frightening statistic of how well over 1 millions children are affected in some way by alcohol misuse.

The idea in a nutshell is to challenge people to go 40 days without alcohol starting on March 1st (roughly following lent) in order to raise awareness, not to condemn or judge.

This could be a good program for youth groups to get involved in – keep an eye out for the materials – some of the stuff David, the designer for the project, was showing us yesterday was excellent.