Sober for a month, aware for a lifetime; Montrealer raises funds for youth
Fundraiser encourages participants to donate what they would drink
Jean-Sébastien Chouinard’s resolution to start 2013 alcohol-free was thwarted when a friend invited him on a sailing trip to St. Maarten. When he came back, he vowed to have a dry February and dragged his friends along for the ride.
“I thought it would be harder,” Chouinard said. There were awkward moments, he remembered, like “when you go to bars and restaurants and the first question you’re asked is what you want to drink. When you say you’ll take a non-alcoholic beer, people look at you like you have a problem.”
This year, he and the Fondation Jean Lapointe (named for the Quebec actor and singer) have partnered for the inaugural edition of an initiative called Les 28 Jours les plus longs de ta vie (The Longest 28 Days of Your Life). A Facebook friend of Chouinard on the FJL’s fundraising committee, which was looking for a way to reach younger donors, followed his sober adventure last year and invited him to pitch the idea.
“I was having one drink a day — having a beer after work or a glass of wine while I cooked — and the fact that I was able to stop drinking for a month made me realize that I could change my routine and be more healthy,” Chouinard said. He hopes the 28 Jours initiative will show people the role alcohol plays in their lives and the sometimes intense social pressure to imbibe. He went to bars and parties, but he didn’t drink. Staying home and avoiding situations where alcohol is present defeats the purpose of the project, Chouinard said.
Participants sign up through Facebook and donate a minimum of $28 (the equivalent of one dollar per day) to go booze-free in February, and can get sponsors to donate on their behalf. Participants calculate how much money they spend on alcohol every month — by figuring $5 for a beer, $7 for a glass of wine, $10 for a cocktail and $4 for a shot — and are encouraged to donate what they would have spent on drinks in February to the foundation.
So far, 400 people have signed up for the 28 Jours program. Chouinard said the goal is to get 1,000 people on board and raise $30,000 — a notso-lofty objective, he believes, since participants are averaging $40 donations each.
The money raised will fund the FJL’s major project: a substanceabuse prevention workshop for Quebec youth, specifically students in Grade 7, a group FJL director Annie Papageorgiou said is especially vulnerable to pressure and in need of education.
“The goal of the workshop is to delay alcohol and drug use as much as possible,” Papageorgiou said. “We don’t think they won’t do it — because we know that when we tell someone not to do something, they do it — but the goal is to give them information on the impact alcohol and drug use can have on them. Without being preachy.”
A 2008 survey found that 26 per cent of Grade 7 students in Quebec had already tried alcohol. By Grade 11, 89 per cent had.
Since 2008, the FJL has presented workshops to more than 120,000 Grade 7 students in French and English high schools across the province.
They hope to meet a further 45,000 this year and to present the workshop to older students.
“We sowed a little seed,” Papageorgiou said, “but we have to keep going with the message and evolve with the youths and the experiences they’ve had with (alcohol and drug) consumption.”