Last year, Debbie Watts and Jill Weinischke from SHARE Foundation attended the National Coalition Academy (NCA). The NCA is a comprehensive training program designed for coalition staff and volunteer leadership developed by the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America’s (CADCA) National Coalition Institute. At the NCA, they learned core competencies and essential procedures to establish and maintain a highly effective anti-drug coalition.
Watts and Weinischke attended this virtual training representing the Mental Health, Substance, and Drug Abuse Coalition (now call ACTIVE Coalition) as a Year One Drug-Free Communities Grantee. The academy combined three weeks of intensive classroom training, three reinforcement online sessions, and access to a web-based workstation along with an organized curriculum within SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework.
To graduate from the yearlong training at NCA, coalitions had to develop and present their five essential products: (1) a community assessment, (2) a logic model, (3) a strategic & action plan, (4) an evaluation plan and (5) a sustainability plan. A total of 96 contact hours (32 hours each training week) were granted, and training contact hours were applied toward Weinischke’s re-certification for Prevention Consultant.
The ACTIVE Coalition graduated from NCA in February 2023, and the ceremony was held at the National Leadership Forum in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC, and witnessed by 4,000 attendees.
