The Violence Intervention Program (VIP) will be donating all of their materials for elementary school presentations to Weyburn and area school divisions, as the group can no longer get grant funding to do the presentations.

VIP has been able to do the presentation over the past six years, with grants and community donations providing for a half-time public educator to make the presentations. In 2001 alone, over 200 presentations were made by the educator in southeast Saskatchewan schools.

The presentations touched on a range of topics that included bullying, healthy expressions of feelings, anger, assertiveness, and healthy self-esteem.

The VIP board of directors decided in May to make the donation as no permanent funding could be secured for the educator's position.

"It is with a heavy heart that we came to the realization that our budget could not continue to support the staffing to do public education in the elementary schools. However, we feel that by donating these presentations, our hard work and vision will continue," said Patt Lenover-Adams, director of VIP.

She noted most schools now have social workers and social skills programs that did not exist 10 years ago when VIP started up, and are in a position where they can offer the information VIP used to present. VIP developed a total of 23 presentations over the past decade to meet the needs of teachers, parents and schools.

VIP will continue to act as a resource and consultant to the schools in future years, with many other resources also available at VIP through their lending library that any member of the community can access.

VIP staff will focus their school-centred information on such issues as dating violence and healthy relationships to junior and senior high school students during the upcoming year.