The UK RIDE Foundation was originally established to raise drug awareness and teach basic life-skills to schoolchildren. For the last two years, its programme has been taught in international schools across Portugal and has received an extremely positive response.
The RIDE programme is split into three separate modules and, after successfully completing the first two years of the programme, pupils have just started the third year of the course. The introduction of the RIDE programme in Portugal was organised by the UK representatives of the Freemasons in Portugal. Members staged various charitable events to help raise much-needed cash and managed to get enough funds to run the programme in Portugal for three years.
UK Freemason and Grand Inspector for Portugal, Tony Jordan, has been overwhelmed by the positive response that the RIDE campaign has received and is currently in talks to bring the programme into Portuguese state schools. In addition to this, the Freemasons in Portugal are working hard to ensure that the RIDE campaign can continue and are currently looking for sponsors to help keep the programme running. To show their appreciation to RIDE, children from Barlavento School in the Algarve wrote these artistic ‘thank you’ letters to the foundation.
