Africa-Press – Cape verde. There are no official statistics, but alcoholism within the migrant community in Portugal, particularly the Cape Verdean community, is a concern for the “Less Alcohol, More Life” Foundation, which wants to promote an awareness campaign.
While a group of young Africans enjoy themselves in a bar consuming alcoholic beverages, Marcos Rodrigues is in a shopping mall parking lot in Lisbon, trying to earn a few extra euros by parking cars in his free time. A construction worker, the young Portuguese man of Cape Verdean origin confesses that he faced serious problems with alcoholism.
“I’ve been drinking alcohol since I was 14 or 16. After my father’s death, I was sad, then I started going out with friends and unintentionally drank a little too much to get rid of the sadness,” he tells DW.
Living in Almada, Marcos, 32, reveals that he made many mistakes in the past because of alcohol. “It was money, women, drugs, and domestic violence,” he says, until he realized he was going down a bad path. Alone, without the help of any institution, he has been trying to change his life. “I started to reduce [alcohol consumption] and try to eat better,” he reports.
Marcos Rodrigues is one of many young Africans and people of African descent facing the drama of alcoholism in Portugal, mainly in the Greater Lisbon area. There are no official figures, but the reality worries the “Less Alcohol, More Life” Foundation, which wants to extend the campaign underway in Cape Verde since 2016 to Portuguese territory, aiming to alert the community to the harmful effects of excessive alcohol consumption.
Psychiatrist Manuel Faustino, who directs the Foundation, wants to take the campaign to every place where there is a Cape Verdean. “We don’t have numbers, but our perception is that in our community [in Portugal] the situation isn’t very different from what we have in Cape Verde. There is a truly worrying situation; there is high levels of abusive consumption, and something that also concerns us in Cape Verde is the fact that consumption is starting at an increasingly younger age,” he states.
Intervention in schools is necessary
For the Cape Verdean doctor, “the situation is relatively serious in Portugal” and investment in “education is essential and fundamental for intervention at the school level.”
“A more systematic, more organized approach will naturally depend on the foundations we are trying to build from a protocol we intend to sign with an NGO linked to the University of Minho, and with the Ministries of Education of both Portugal and Cape Verde,” he reveals.
The problem, which transcends the borders of Cape Verde, requires monitoring and adequate responses from various institutions, including in the health sector, says Lenice Gomes, a Social Service technician linked to the Foundation.
“It’s also important to have a coordinated approach that includes prevention, namely developing awareness campaigns that address this issue within the community in general; developing actions, for example, together with local authorities and youth divisions; developing actions in schools aimed at raising awareness among young people about the risks associated with alcohol,” she argues.
In addition to schools and municipalities, Lenice Gomes also highlights the contribution of associations and the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) itself, which work with immigrant communities. As part of the measures, the Foundation also proposes training health personnel and social workers in intercultural skills, who have direct involvement with the migrant population.
“This competence leads to more inclusive and empathetic work, which helps with prevention. Technicians can be much better equipped to identify situations of alcohol abuse and direct these people to more appropriate treatment,” Lenice Gomes considers.
The “Less Alcohol, More Life” Foundation aims to involve all Portuguese and Cape Verdean partners in containing and overcoming this social scourge.
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