Program helps cut risks of serving alcohol

Project Safer provides assessments and trainings to those working at festivals which plan to serve alcoholic beverages to the public. The service is free of charge to nonprofit community event coordinators within Ventura County. By partnering with Project Safer, local events can decrease their liability and the risk of alcoholrelated violence, sexual assault, injury and vehicle crashes is reduced.

Responsible Beverage Service Training takes about an hour and can be done the morning of an event. Security personnel, identification checkers and serving staff are brought together to learn how to recognize signs of intoxication, spot fake IDs and learn the legal liabilities of serving alcohol.

Besides taking part in the trainings, festival coordinators can also use strategies such as ending alcohol sales an hour prior to event closing and using wrist bands to clearly identify those over 21 years old.

Funded by the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department, Training, Applied Research and Alcohol and Drug Prevention Division, Project Safer (an acronym for "Safety Assessments for Event Remediation") began working with the community in 2004.

For more information, visit www.safetyassessments.com.