The Tomah Health Community Foundation is helping more children make safe and healthy decisions. Foundation members donated $2,500 to the Tomah Police Department July 28 to expand the local Drug Abuse Resistance Education or D.A.R.E. program to include all public and private elementary schools during the upcoming 2026-2027 school year.
“We’re looking very much forward to getting with all of the 5th grade students primarily focused on the elementary schools at this time,” said Tomah Police D.A.R.E. Instructor and Patrol Officer Jayden Olson. “There’s a lot of unique benefits and not only is the drug enforcement and the possible health effects discussed, but we also are teaching kids responsibility. We’re talking about stress and how to handle that, how to report certain things like bullying, ultimately not only to help with the health effects and the effects of drugs, but how to be a good member of society.”
D.A.R.E. is an education program aimed to prevent the use of controlled drugs, membership in gangs, and violent behavior. Tomah Police had used the D.A.R.E. program years ago but it was put on hold after the department began to focus on older students using the Gang Resistance Education And Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program which teaches lessons on effective gang and violence prevention.
Olson said the support from the foundation will be helpful for the second year of the program. “This program is just going to continue to grow. Something that we would love to do is to get up into the middle school and high school levels as we know as we age and tend to have different ways of life, getting more responsibilities added in, getting a lot of different environments put into their situations that you might find yourself in. So the donation is greatly appreciated,” said Olson who will team up with Tomah Police D.A.R.E. Instructor and Patrol Sgt. Audra Gomez.
“It’s growing thing every single day and there’s new stuff that’s coming out every single day,” added Olson. “Technology, narcotics, everything like that has evolved. We want to make sure that people at a young age are able to identify and understand what that may be and to help avoid that from being a part of their lifestyle moving forward.”
Tomah Health Community Foundation president Brian Eirschele said the donation supports the mission of the foundation to help not-for-profit organizations that enhance the health and wellness of residents in Monroe County. “It’s always exciting to be able to help our local community. This donation is in hope of helping out the young people of our community on drug resistance,” said Eirschele. “We talked about it as a board and if we help just one person, we’ve been successful, and the police will be successful. That’s what we’re most excited about is helping our community.”
It’s the second year that the foundation has donated money to the Tomah Police D.A.R.E. program.