Youngsters aged ten have been found drinking alcohol and 17 percent of young people in Bermuda binge drink.

But as startling as these facts revealed at a public meeting are, alcohol and substance abuse is only one area of growing concern for the state of the Island?s young people.

Three thousand children in middle and senior schools were asked in 2003 to state what were the risk factors in their parish and across Bermuda generally likely to lead them into anti-social behaviour and crime.

On the list of factors of greatest concern were community disorganisation, poor academic performance, ?laws and norms? favourable to drug use and handguns, friends? delinquent behaviour, personal transition and mobility, low neighbourhood attachment and gang involvement.

A new programme has been set in motion across the Island with neighbours working together to find solutions to divert youngsters away from the temptations of crime and anti-social behaviour.

Under the banner Parishes Achieving Change Together (PACT) it has been heralded as the Bermuda version of the US Communities That Care system providing tools to train members of the community go out and help the young people of their neighbourhoods develop into healthy and mature adults.

But it will be 2009 before anyone is able to see whether or not PACT is achieving the desired effect and addressing the problems of youngsters getting involved in substance abuse and drugs, violence, crime and school drop-out.

Hamilton Parish was the first on the Island to set up its PACT group in 2004. Since then the community has set up initiatives including literacy training at Francis Patton School, neighbourhood watch programmes and a parish clean-up last November.

?Hamilton Parish was the first community that wanted to implement PACT. They were ready because they already had a ?champion? holding meetings within the community and when they heard about PACT they approached us,? said Martha Dismont, of lead agency The Family Centre.

?They have had some success and they?ve been doing it for a year-and-a-half. They have a voluntary literacy programme, neighbourhood watch and are pursuing standards and training for the serving of alcohol.

?They are working with businesses in the parish to prevent the sale of alcohol to youngsters and they are developing their commitment for youth involvement.?

She said there had been some difficulties trying to keep everyone involved committed and focused, but the Hamilton Parish PACT was continuing and was the pilot scheme for the rest of the Island.

Sandys, Pembroke and Devonshire have also begun the process of setting up their own PACT groups. Spreading the news to the people of Warwick in the hope that they might be the next to join the rolling programme intended to eventually encompass all nine parishes was the reason for the meeting at Thorburn Hall in Ord Road last week.

Kimberley Jackson, preventative officer with the Ministry for National Drug Control, which is the host organisation, said: ?We want to stop substance abuse before it starts. We want to develop young people into healthy adults.?

To achieve this PACT works to bring neighbours together to act as a unit addressing problems and seeking to prevent future problems occurring from the viewpoint of a community being able to steer youngsters away from anti-social behaviours and towards positive goals, the meeting was told.

And she gave a personal example, explaining: ?When I grew up the community looked out for me. If I did something wrong before I even got home my mother knew about it ? and this was in the days before cell phones. Our behaviour was sanctioned by the community.?

It is getting back to that level of community-influenced behavioural control that PACT aims to achieve.

Mrs. Jackson continued: ?Nowadays we have diverse communities, Internet, TV and even some neighbours who do not know who is living next door. In the 21st Century we don?t have a Mrs. Jones that looks out for the community.?

She said PACT was a way of ?re-tooling to get back to what we used to have? and was based on the idea that a healthy child is created by having strong bonds to a good role model either through a parent, respectable adult, school or community.

Using the information of risk factors identified by the 3,000 schoolchildren in the 2003 survey, and comparing it with further surveys at three year intervals, it is hoped it will be possible to detect trends and assess whether the training of residents within the PACT community groups is achieving the desired outcome of young people bettering their lives and behaviours.

Having started out in 2004, Hamilton Parish will be the first parish to show either success or failure when the 2009 surveys are conducted.

It is the intention of the Ministry of National Drug Control to provide the resources to help the PACT groups ? which need to be a minimum of ten community-spirited volunteers ? to carry out initiatives to help their young people, said Mrs. Jackson.

Ms Dismont, of The Family Centre, said: ?In any community you need to have one person, a champion, who is committed to stay when others might walk away and rally more people. That person is called the champion of the PACT.

?Then there needs to be an administrator to organise meetings and then you must be able to identify people in the community who are willing to do the training and the work. And the community must have agreed common interests to work with.?