BURLINGTON, VT – During National Recovery Month, Senator Welch welcomed $2 million from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention to the DREAM Project, an organization providing Vermont’s youth with peer-to-peer mentoring services which prevent high-risk behaviors such as substance misuse and abuse. 

“The DREAM Project has played an important role in our State by providing kids preventative resources through one-on-one and group mentorship—reaching rural communities, which are too often left behind. I am thankful the Department of Justice is helping DREAM extend their services here in Vermont so they can continue to help connect kids to brighter futures and more opportunities, especially as kids face more pressure to try drugs or alcohol,” said Senator Welch. 

The DOJ’s funding will expand DREAM’s one-to-one and group mentoring programs to soon reach over 420 young Vermonters (ages 6-17) across 30 schools and neighborhoods. High school mentors of younger youth will receive school-based instruction, aligned with Vermont’s Flexible Pathways Initiative, and receive credit and instruction benefiting graduation. 

This Congress, Senator Welch has led his colleagues in a series of substance misuse research, treatment, and prevention efforts. In December, his bill, the Testing, Rapid Analysis, and Narcotic Quality (TRANQ) Research Act, was signed into law by President Biden. He also co-sponsors the Overcoming Prevalent Inadequacies in Overdose Information Data Sets (OPIOIDS) Act, the Expanding Nationwide Access to Test Strips Act, the Reentry Act of 2023, and the Modernizing Opioid Treatment Access Act of 2023.  

###