1st #DAS success story

This young man on the right in the picture is the first DAS (Drug Advice and Support) success story.

He paid the DAS team a surprise visit on 22 December ' 08 as he was celebrating his 4th month of being clean. Here he is sharing with Marlon Parker how his life has changed since that day 4 months ago when he decided to make use of the DAS service on Mxit.

NEW ADVISER TO DRUG ADVICE AND SUPPORT TEAM

This is Bradley doing his first drug advice and support session.He is not the best at typing, but he know it is not about his typing it is about people out there needing advice and support.He did some great work and great encouragements for his first time.The 6 contacts that chatted to Bradley had to be blessed because he knows a lot and been through a lot so he is able to reach the need of the contact.

The drug advice and support session went very slow yesterday and we manage to get 703 messages in our session from 2.45pm - 5pm

drug advice and support extending there time

20 January 2009 das session: Drug Advice and Support service was online from 2.30pm - 7pm
like i said before our services is growing and so is the need out there, so therefore we need to extend our hours to.

We had two sessions from 2.30pm-5pm and from 5pm-7pm. My slot was from 2.30-5pm and i had lots of social issues like alcohol problemes and drug problems (dagga). The people that i chat to want help but they are not prepare to change there lifesyle and that is the magger step to come of from drugs.

There was also a 18 year old girl from Elsies Rivier that gave her life to the Lord Jesus Christ

we manage to get 1500 messages for the first session

#DAS IS GROWING AND GROWING

we started the real with 20 young people, after we had approached their school and held a presentation there.
"And from the 20, we now have 100 contacts and have had more than 400 conversations over a period of 12 weeks. We do the counseling and questions and answer sessions on a Tuesday and Thursday between 3pm and 5pm.

This was the stats to date on Wednesday 20 August 2008

THE CURRENT STATS UP TO DATE:

Total Messages – 64 921

Average number of conversations per session: 12 255 / 102 hours = 240.3 per session (Max 473, Min 21)
Average number of Messages = 1273 per session (Max 3678, Min 234)
Average number of conversations per Advisor in a session = 37 (Min 4, Maximum 56)

HELP IS AT ADDICTS FINGERTIPS

USING TECHNOLOGY TO GET DRUG-FREE

The age of technology has change the way we do many things, and with the ever increasing techno gadgets available, connecting with someone thousands of kilometers away is as simple as a click of a button.

Knowing the first hand the benefits of technology, an information technology (IT) lecture decided to base his PHD thesis on how IT can help people kick their drug habit.

Marlon Parker, from Silvertown, is not only doing his research on paper he has already implemented a programme at a nonprofit, drug counseling organization.

With many young people communicating via MXit, he thought it would be the ideal medium to use to reach them. "Research found that there is an increase in mobile instant messaging (MIM) among teenagers in South Africa, many of whom are using MXit as their primary tool for messaging. Collaborating with a Bridgetown non-profit organisation (NPO), and Impact Direct Ministries (IDM), we started a projest to provide a platform on MXit to offer counmselling, advice and frequestly asked questions for people impacted by drug and substance abuse.

"The main objecdtive wat to meet the youth on a platform that they are comfortable with as a first point of contact, where they can express themselves, and receive counselling or advice on the issue of drug and substance abuse," Mr Parker said.

He added: "The MXit projest is just one of the projects we run.

A STORY FROM THE LOCAL NEWS PAPER (ATHLONE NEWS) WEDNESDAY AUGUST 20 2008

Advice Support expansions

This year we are starting with a bang and expanding Advice Support services with the launch of 2 new additions to DAS (Drug Advice Support). PAS (Positive Advice Support), advice and support for people impacted by HIV or AIDS, and CAS (Career Advice Support), offering youth advice on studies,career and general tips, has been launched today and is available to the public.

How to add PAS:
- Add contact
- Select Google Talk
- Google ID: pasdirect , Nickname: PAS
- Accept Contact

How to add CAS:
- Add contact
- Select Google Talk
- Google ID: casdirect , Nickname: CAS
- Accept Contact

These services will be available on Tuesdays and Thursdays 3 - 5pm. With these expansions we hope to reach and start reconstructing as many people using technology.
Posted by Marlon at 6:15 PM 0 comments
Labels: advice support, Career, CAS, communication, Community

Server kicked us out

New endings for the drug advice and support project we got our domain name .org will give you
the full link later.

We had a bad start to our das session the first few minutes the server kicked us out and there was just a few contacts online in the 15 minute mark.

15 minute in session 211 messages.
45 minute in session 440 messages.
1 hour 30 minutes in session we got 885 messages

We finished the drug advice and support session 30 minutes before the time the server kicked us out again.we got our backup on google talk.

enjoy your day God bless..

Drug Advice Support(DAS) statistics

The success of DAS has not only open doors to many new opportunities using mobile technologies but also granted us the joy of seeing the lives of many people being reconstructed as we were able to be that lifeline to many. To give an indication how effective DAS has been some of the statistics (over a period of 102 hours / 5 months) are found below:

Total conversations: 12,255
Number of Drug conversations: 6921 (56.5%)
• Tik: 1913
• Dagga: 634
• Heroin: 846
• Smoking: 147
• Mandrax: 69
• Alcohol: 588
• Rocks: 30
• Ecstasy: 23
• General Drug queries: 2671

Other conversations:
Pregnancy: 101
Relationship: 297
Sex related: 99
HIV/AIDS: 38
School/Education: 175
Depression: 120
Sickness: 19
Death/Suicide: 106
Employment: 362
Rape: 23
Physical/Emotional Abuse: 236
Religious: 761
General: 2896

Total Messages – 64 921

Average number of conversations per session: 12 255 / 102 hours = 240.3 per session (Max 473, Min 21)
Average number of Messages = 1273 per session (Max 3678, Min 234)
Average number of conversations per Advisor in a session = 37 (Min 4, Maximum 56)

This is the year where DAS along with the other Advice Support services (PAS and CAS) will be expanded into schools, colleges, universities and various communities across the Western Cape, South Africa.

As posted by: Marlon Parker http://marlonparker.co.za

ADVISERS GIVING THERE ALL

Since im a adviser on this DAS project things is just expanding and we are well over 50 000 messages.the advisers is giving there all to help people out there even working on Christmas day

08 JANUARY 2009

STATS FOR THE SESSION:
130 people/conversations
1394 messages

06 JANUARY 2009

STATS FOR THE DAY;
1895 conversations
2935 messages

01 January 2009

What a way to start the year.DAS was live online for the first day of the new year.The matric results came out at midnight and had quite a number of people that was either suicidal because they did not pass and needed to chat to someone.At the same time there was also people that came online to say that they have passed and was so excited and over the moon.It was a day of mixed emotions.My heart really goes out to the those who did not make it.

here are the stats for the session:
115 conversations/people
945 messages

NEW YEARS EVE

New Years Eve we had a good day with counselling.We had busy day as it was the day before the matric results was going to come out.We had lots of different cases.
We also reached 50 000 messages during this session,and that as done over a period of 96 hours.What an achievement for the team.Well done DAS team for the great work!!!

here are the stats for that session:
2441 messages
210 conversations/people

25 DECEMBER 2008

This was an exiting for all the advisers.It was just amazing to see the commitment from the team to help others.Everyone spent the morning at home having Christmas lunch.After lunch everyone made their way to the IMPACT CENTRE to come and do counselling.Its not often that you hear of people sacrificing their Christmas Day to help others.So just want to say 'GOD BLESS YOU" to the RECONSTRUCTED TEAM.Was surprised to see people online actually.We had a good day and had lots of snacks hehe.

stats for the day:
130 conversations/people
1248 messages

THANK YOU JESUS

23 December 2008

Had a good day with counselling.Had various cases we dealt with eg.teen pregnancies,peoples friends and families that are on drugs and looking for help for them and just people that wanted to chat and looking for a friend that can listen to them.
stats for this session:
200 conversations/people
2356 messages

Also during the session we asked one of the ladies to contact young girl that had fallen pregnant and needed to speak to someone.She was advised in what to do and we will be keeping in contact with her to monitor hr progress.

Drug Advice Support(DAS) expansion for 2009

After breaking the 50,000 message barrier on DAS we are planning our expansion plan for 2009. This will include taking the advice support service to schools in the Western Cape and the rest of South Africa.

With the continuous development of the DAS system we are also looking forward to the expansion of the number of advisers. The team also welcomed Mrs. Lucille Aanhuizen, Masters Social Science, who will be advancing her research in this project. Technological enhancements planned for DAS 2009 will be improvement on our remote accessibility, special users for professional counselors, increase chat application list and introduction of intelligent advisor.

Posted by Marlon Parker

Angel on MXit to support HIV/AIDS in South Africa

With the increase of AIDS deaths in South Africa, as part of the Angel project we decided to make relevant information available to users on MXit.

"South Africa is currently experiencing one of the most severe AIDS epidemics in the world. At the end of 2007, there were approximately 5.7 million people living with HIV in South Africa, and almost 1,000 AIDS deaths occurring every day."...

With technology in our hands we are able to empower those who are affected by HIV/AIDS and see how we can bring about the reconstruction of our nation through education on every possible platform. We hope with information and contact details at their fingertips on Angel (we will expand this over the next few weeks) that this will be a step in the right direction in educating our youth.

How to access Angel on MXit:

- Go to Menu
- Contacts
- Add Contacts
- MXit Services
- Add the following (Service Name: Angel, Nickname: Angel)
- Accept Contact

As posted by Marlon Parker http://www.marlonparker.blogspot.com/
Twitter: marlonparker

New Record

We had another great session today with our mailto:DAS@mxit.%20Lots of people where helped.Today we reached another record of people we helped.

Todays stats:262 conversations/people
:3106 messages

That is awesome!!!!!!

Thank you Jesus for a great session.All glory goes to you.

Find your Angel on MXit

Last Friday, 12 December 2008, at the graduation of The Reconstructed we launched a new 24hour service "Angel". The Angel project on MXit was birthed out of the need that many of our young people need to be informed about the dangers of substance abuse on a platform that they will be able to interact with. Angel is a collaboration between CPUT, MXit and Impact Direct that provides MXit users with information concerning: substance abuse, HIV/Aids, Abuse, depression, stress and coping. Each of these topics are then further explored. For example Substance Abuse have topics such as "What is Substance Abuse?, What is Addiction?, Type of Substances, Stages of drug dependency, Signs of Drug Use and categories of drugs. Under the Type of substances Angel gives more details about the most common drugs and this will be updated on a regular basis. Each of these substances are then further broken down. Each drug will be described and discussed (Street names, how it is used, characteristics, short term effects, long term effects and withdrawal symptoms).Other than just giving more information about the various topics Angel also provide a "Find your Angel" service which gives users of Angel contact numbers to various services in the different provinces. We realised that many people don't know where to go to for help when facing certain social issues and we're trying to help people especially our youth with the info in a way that they are comfortable with.Angel is an additional service to DAS (Drug Advice Support which only runs Tue and Thu 3-5pm) and runs 24/7 and no cost involved to subscribe to the service. We are excited to see how Angel will be used to change lives accross our nation.
Posted by Marlon at 12:03 AM 0 comments
Labels: Angel, MXit, reconstructed

DAS@mxit

We had yet another excellent counselling session at DAS@mxit.It was surprisingly busy being a holiday and all.It just goes to show how many people out there is desperately seeking help.The Reconstructed Team has committed themselves to work throughout the holidays to supply these peoples needs.DAS@mxit will be running throughout the holidays and Festive season.Thank you guys for your committment and the love you show to the thousands out there.

The stats for yesterdays session:2168 messages
224 people/conversations

Thank you Lord for your faithfulness.