Naval Hospital Bremerton (NHB) volunteers assisted the Drug and Education for Youth Program (DEFY) at the Bangor Health and Education Center aboard Naval Base Kitsap, Aug. 16ñ19.

The volunteers served as mentors to educate the youth about the dangers of drugs and alcohol during the five-day camp.

“DEFY reaches out to the youth in so many ways because it gives military members and their children the opportunity to understand about what drugs are,” said Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Richard Schreck, NHB, DEFY program director.

“The program shows them the aspects and benefits of what the program teaches to their children.”

DEFY is a world-wide self-esteem building program that provides military children, ages 9-12, with the tools they need to resist drugs, gangs and alcohol.

One of its missions is to provide commanders with a drug demand reduction program that facilitates and enhances family readiness to promote mission accomplishment.

During the camp, volunteers also challenged the children through group activities designed to emphasize the importance of teamwork and dealing with peer pressure.

“I think it is a great program for the children, because they’re learning respect and safe ways of saying no or what to do in situations where there are bullying and drugs,” said Carmen O’Moore, parent.

There were indoor classes as well as outdoor physical fitness activities, including supervised tourism and hiking field trips.

“With military families, you don’t have a lot of opportunities, because family members many times are deployed,” said Schreck. “You have children with a single parent who get sent off to camps which concentrate more on games, but here we do curriculum-based stuff on top of games. It has been a lot of fun.”

“This is my first year at DEFY, and we do these fun games,” said Lauren White. “I’m glad they are doing a program about this [drug abuse] and are learning about not doing drugs early so we don’t do it in the future. It’s just good to learn at an early age, and I would recommend my friends to join.”