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The PAL Coalition, a community based collaborative working to reduce substance abuse by and among  young people living in the 7th Street corridor of Central Louisville, needs help securing items for students and families who participate in and benefit from its programs.

Specifically, PAL an initiative of Family & Children’s Place, a child-abuse prevention agency, needs hygienic items for its PAL Center, an after-school program at Lynnhurst United Church of Christ in Southwest Louisville.

Needed items on PAL’s wish list are:

• Travel and standard sized shampoo and conditioner
• Soap
• Shower gel
• Lotion
• Deodorant

The items are provided to students who use the PAL Center, which offers homework help, games, advocacy training, some help to build family skills and knowledge about things such as alcohol and drugs, communicating, self-awareness, bullying and other peer-related issues, and time in the gym for basketball and other sports. The center averages between 10 and 40 students daily, Monday through Friday, half of them refugees from Syria, Rwanda, the Congo and elsewhere.

Please help PAL help students who are seeking out healthy alternatives to the dangerous 3-6 p.m., after school time where they are most likely to be a victim or perpetrator of a crime, experiment with drugs or engage in risky behavior. Help them help themselves.

You can drop the needed items off for PAL team members at Family & Children’s Place, at the intersection of Kentucky and Fifth streets, in downtown Louisville.