Unite for Youth receives $200K grant

A local coalition aimed at reducing substance abuse among the community’s youth has been awarded a $200,000 grant, but behind the grant lies a long, difficult application process.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) awarded the Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking Act (STOP Act) Grant to the Lincoln County Unite for Youth Coalition on Aug. 31. The grant will pay out four $50,000 installments over the next four years, said UFW Project Coordinator Maggie Anderson.

The UFY was started in 2008 under the U.S. Surgeon General’s call to action against youth substance abuse. Anderson said the money received will go toward a variety of outreach efforts to reduce the county’s struggle with underage alcohol and substance abuse through community prevention. 

“We wrote [the grant application] knowing that the pieces were all present in our community and we just needed some funding to fill in the gaps,” Anderson said.

Anderson said the grant will help with a new developmentally appropriate curriculum in the schools, which will link parents, teachers and the community to build a drug-prevention method within all aspects of children’s lives. The grant will also go toward helping fund mentors from various fields such as law enforcement, healthcare, volunteer work and parents and professionals, ultimately sending the message that it’s possible to make healthy decisions and live a healthy lifestyle. 

“We would love to have mentors working in our schools on a daily basis,” Anderson said.

Behind the grant, Anderson said, was months of frustration, anxiety and tireless efforts.  

The UFY had already been rejected in both of the previous years, Anderson said, and they worked on evaluating current goals and objectives for the grant for a year.

On March 1, at the end of a week with little sleep, Anderson said they were finally at the application deadline. 

The i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed, but when Anderson went to submit the application on the SAMHSA website, the application wouldn’t go through. 

“We had been trying all day. It’s not like we submitted the application at 10 p.m. for an 11 p.m. deadline, we uploaded this at 1 p.m.,” Anderson said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to do it.”

Anderson waited anxiously for an hour before trying to send it again, only to see the application loading bar freeze on the screen for another hour. She then contacted the website’s technology department and was told to try a different method. 

When she tried to submit the application again, the window read “success,” and then immediately read “reject.”

Apparently, Anderson said the application had been rejected because of special characters in the documents’ names. 

At the time, Anderson was on speaker phone with her Project Director Vel Shaver.

“I said, This is not true, I read the page,’” Anderson recalled panicking as Shaver tried to calm her down. Anderson said she had read through every line of the directions, and there wasn’t any rule about special characters. They then had to go through all of their documents and rename the attachments to remove certain characters that weren’t allowed. 

“We uploaded it again, and it wouldn’t grab it. I just sat at my computer just waiting, waiting, waiting,” Anderson said. “The time ticked, my heart was beating ... and then you get to that point where it was 10 minutes before the deadline. It’s a federal deadline, so no means no.”

After 11 hours of trying, the deadline hit, and Anderson saw a notice appear on the web page that read, “This application is no longer available to apply.”

“It’s like that,” Anderson said. “12:01 p.m., boom you’re done.”

After that, the group went up the chain of command to appeal the rejection. After SAMHSA gave more bad news to their project manager in Washington, D.C., the project manager said they should talk to their senator.

It just so happened that Anderson had the number of U.S. Sen. Jon Tester’s aid, Monica Carmean, who had told her recently that if she ever needed anything, to call her.

As the last chance they had, Anderson said the group approached Carmean, who said she would help.

A few days later, they received an email from Carmean, informing them that Tester’s grant specialist, Deb Frandsen, deemed the application worthy of forwarding to SAMHSA and personally walked over to submit the application to the SAMHSA office. 

“I was so touched by that, that they would take the time to do that,” Anderson said. If anything, Anderson said, they now had hope.

Anderson received a confirmation email on June 16, informing her that their grant application was enrolled and was sitting with hundreds of applications across the country. All they could do, Anderson said, was wait.

If they were awarded, Anderson was informed that they would receive an email with the subject “NOA,” (notice of award). Anderson said she impatiently checked her email inbox every day.

Sure enough on Aug. 31, she saw on her computer an email with the subject line, “NOA.”

“I didn’t even open it to read it, I just went, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Anderson said. “I immediately forwarded it to [Shaver] and did a little celebration dance.”