Don’t Know? Ask First

The General Secretariat for Youth under the auspices of the Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs and the non-government organization PRAKSIS launched an innovative campaign to inform young people about a better quality of life.

The campaign, with the title “Ask First,” began in July as three groups of trained volunteers set out in sail boats and trailers to travel to the most popular Greek tourist destinations in the Aegean, Ionian and mainland Greece.

The aim of the campaign was to approach young people on holiday and inform them of the dangers of smoking, alcohol, drug abuse and sexually transmitted disease.

The campaign lasted until the end of August where some 60,000 young people were informed during this period.
Athena Konstantinou, a volunteer in the sail boat expedition said: “The volunteers of Ask First combine their summer holidays with the aim to inform young people of issues that concern us directly.”

She explained their initial hesitation to the approach but asserted that to their surprise “young people have many issues they were more happy to discuss with us than approach a doctor or another adult.”

The campaign aimed to cover the whole of Greece and some of the destinations the teams went to were Sifnos, Milos, Poros, Ios, Corfu, Mykonos, Nafplio, Naxos, Paros, Chania, Lefkada, Kefallonia, Zakynthos and Chalkidiki.