Community and Schools Youth Drug Prevention Program

Overview

With this solicitation, OJJDP seeks to support a National Community and Schools Youth Drug Prevention Program for the purpose of delivering substance use prevention programs in schools in partnership with local law enforcement and community coalitions. The successful national organization will provide funding and training and technical assistance (TTA) to local non-profits who will be required to build community coalitions to educate youth in schools and in extracurricular programming on drug prevention. Community coalitions consist of community leaders that organize to meet the local prevention needs of the youth and families in their communities. Partnerships among non-profits, community coalitions, and law enforcement ensure that communities develop and implement comprehensive approaches to prevent youth substance use in their neighborhoods. 

School and community-based partnerships have proven to be effective in youth substance use prevention strategies by ensuring that communities adopt balanced and comprehensive approaches to reduce substance use in school settings. Community-based coalitions consist of youth, parents, businesses, media, schools, youth-serving organizations, law enforcement, religious/fraternal organizations, civic and volunteer organizations, treatment providers, healthcare professionals, state, local and Tribal governments, and other organizations with the agreed goal of reducing youth substance use. 

This program will support communities to implement a range youth substance use prevention strategies that include but not limited to the following:

• Developing comprehensive drug prevention programs for all students from preschool through grade 12 that include health education, early intervention, mentoring, treatment referral, and related activities. 
• Devising strategies to integrate family engagement approaches to educate and inform to prevent or interrupt further substance use. 
• Providing professional training and development for school personnel, parents, law enforcement officials, and other community members. 
• Supporting "safe zones of passage" for students between home and school through enhanced law enforcement, neighborhood patrols, and similar measures. 

Applicants must describe how their proposed project/program will integrate and sustain meaningful youth and family partnerships into all sections of the proposal narrative — including the description of the issue, project design and implementation, capabilities and competencies, plan for collecting data — and the budget. 

Depending on the nature of an applicant's proposed project, youth and family partnership could consist of one or more of the following: 

• Individual-level partnership in case planning and direct service delivery (before, during, and after contact with youth-serving systems). 
• Agency-level partnership (e.g., in policy, practice, and program development, implementation, and evaluation; staffing; advisory bodies; budget development).
• System-level partnership (e.g., in strategic planning activities, system improvement initiatives, advocacy strategies, reform efforts). 

The goal for this solicitation is to administer a program to support new or existing local nonprofit programs to implement best practices or promising approaches for drug prevention programs targeted to youth in school and extracurricular settings. 

The program’s overall objective is to provide project sites with the training and technical assistance needed to develop strategies, partnerships, and processes to deliver substance abuse prevention and intervention education in schools and in extracurricular programming. This may include the implementation of new programs and/or referrals to treatment services.

OJJDP will consider applications under which two or more entities (project partners) would carry out the federal award; however, only one entity may be the applicant for the solicitation. Any others must be proposed as subrecipients (subgrantees).

Anticipated Number of Awards: 1 
Anticipated Maximum Dollar Amount per Award: Award will be up to $10,000,000 
Period of Performance Start Date: 10/01/2024 
Period of Performance Duration (Months): 36

Type of Award: OJP expects to make one award under this funding opportunity as a cooperative agreement.

OJP may, in certain cases, provide additional funding in future years to awards made under this funding opportunity through continuation awards.

Applications must be submitted to DOJ electronically through a two-step process that begins in Grants.gov and is completed in JustGrants.