BROTHER RONALD DRAHOZAL, CSC by Wahid Hasan on Friday, February 25, 2011 at 4:10am
From the Director's Desk
APON has finished 17 glorious years of service to drug addicts in Bangladesh. APON stated as a small Halfway House with one recovering addict and very few material processions but quickly developed to become the leading Drug Rehabilitation center in Bangladesh. For this we must thank God and the many people who have helped us over the years. During the past year APON has taken some very important steps to develop and improve our services to Drug addicts in Bangladesh. We have continued to serve male drug addicts and we have expanded our children’s program. We have done well in Dhaka, Mymenshing and Narsingdi establishing networks among the drug users as a part of UNODC projects. This year we also opened a Female Rehabilitation and Day Care Center with the assistance of Family Health International, Bangladesh. We have been making contacts with those serving street children and we hope to continue developing our adapted Children’s Drug Rehabilitation Program, especially among the regular and part time street children. We look forward to doing more for Street Children in drug preventive and awareness programs plus offering drug treatment and rehabilitation to more of these youngsters. To do this well we will need the help of international organizations. APON's development motto is: "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where is no path and leave a trail” so as a result APON is: A small (but growing) light in the vast darkness of drug addiction in Bangladesh. I believe that the staff, volunteers and others have been working very hard to not only continue our rehabilitation program but to develop all aspects of our service programs. One of the “trails" APON is leaving is that rehabilitation of drug addicts leads to behavior change and therefore helps to prevent both drug