By Matters India Reporter
Mangaluru, Feb 15, 2023: A Catholic social worker, who has campaigned against substance abuse for three decades, on February 15 received the first “Life Time Achievement award” instituted by a Jain center in Karnataka.
Dharmasthala conferred the award on Thomas Scaria, who heads the Ecolink Institute of Well-being, for his outstanding contributions to prevent and manage substance abuse.
Karnataka Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot gave away the award at a function at Dharmasthala, some 75 km east of Mangaluru, a port town in the southern Indian state. It comprises a citation, memento and a cash award of 25,000 rupees.
Veerendra Heggade, the Dharmadhikari (head) of Dharmasthala who instituted the award, pointed out that Scaria was the first recipient of the award. He congratulated the winner for his contributions to the community management of addiction and capacity building of the work force.
Scaria, who is also a senior journalist, has spent three decades in campaigning against drugs and alcoholism and training hundreds of addiction professionals globally.
The governor, a former federal minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, underlined the need for more committed people to work among drug users and alcohol dependents. “Substance Use Disorder is growing day by day, and only a movement can curb its growth,” he asserted.
Scaria started his mission on drug prevention in 1991 by initiating a students’ movement against addiction called Link Anti Addiction Action Group and later co-founding the Link Rehabilitation Center, where he served as its director for 20 years.
He joined Colombo Plan in 2010 and coordinated several projects in addiction management and capacity building in more than 25 countries for almost 10 years before returning to India.
Currently, he is engaged in training addiction professionals from nearly 20 countries as the approved training provider of the Colombo Plan and as a global trainer under the UNODC.
The awarding ceremony was attended by more than 5,000 people, mostly recovering people from the Dharmasthala’s community based deaddiction camps and their family members. The program was hosted by Dharmasthala Rural Development Project and Jana Jagruthi Vedhige (People’s Vigilance Committee).
Vivek Vincent Pais, a Catholic lay man who heads the deaddiction project under the People’s Vigilance Committee, told Matters India that Dharmasthala’s community based recovery camps were supported by Scaria in the initial years.
“Today, it is one of the largest community project in the world with over 1,500 camps to its credit and more than hundred thousand recovering addicts.”
Father Jose Valiaparambil, vicar general of the Beltangady diocese, congratulated Scaria, a member of the diocese, for receiving the recognition from Dharmasthala.
The priest said several migrant Catholics in the diocese have problem with alcoholism and only “such mass movements can help them come out of addictions.”