The Youth Alcohol Awareness and Education Foundation, Inc. — established by Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits (Southern Glazer’s) to fund programs that support alcohol safety and underage drinking prevention — just announced the AlcoholEdu for High School online lesson is once again available at no cost to all high schools in Broward and Miami-Dade counties in Florida, Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties in Texas, along with Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New York, Queens and Richmond counties in New York for the 2024-2025 school year. The program will be available in these markets throughout the school year.
AlcoholEdu for High School, developed by EVERFI® from Blackbaud®, is a 90-minute, interactive resource that engages students in high school with science-based alcohol education and interactive exercises, providing an individualized experience that changes perceptions, motivates behavior change and supports healthier decisions regarding alcohol, Southern Glazer’s states.
The course focuses on five categories: Knowing the Basics, Knowing Your Influences, Brain and Body, Smart Decisions and Future Ready. Through this scalable online program, which has been proven to reduce negative consequences associated with underage drinking, schools can reach all students with a consistent message and empower them to make safer and healthier decisions about alcohol, according to Southern Glazer’s.
The Positive Impact on Students
For the most recent 2023-2024 school year, the program saw significant increases in reach and impact. After having completed the Southern Glazer’s-sponsored course, students achieved 25% knowledge gain, by increasing their average assessment scores from 64% to 89%. Since the kickoff of Southern Glazer’s program in 2017, the initiative has impacted 41,493 students from more than 289 high schools, with the completion of nearly 34,000 hours of learning, Southern Glazer’s states.
“As an individual, I do not plan on drinking, but now if I am in the vicinity of a person who has been I will be prepared with the right course of action to take,” said a student from Florida in a news release. “I liked the example of the positive peer pressure of ‘not drinking till we’re both of legal age,’ It was refreshing example of what is usually a stiff topic for some.”
Educators who used the digital education program during the 2023-2024 year provided overwhelmingly positive reviews, with 88% saying this course was interesting for their students, 83% agreeing the course enhanced their teaching material and 100% providing a quality rating of “Good” or better, according to Southern Glazer’s.
“This is a great source and a different way of getting the information other than the teacher telling them,” said a participating educator in the release.
The Youth Alcohol Awareness and Education Foundation launched the EVERFI program in South Florida in 2017, expanded into Dallas in 2019 and branched out into New York in 2020, according to Southern Glazer’s.
