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GANG PREVENTION/POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT
WHEREAS, maintaining and enhancing community peace and
prosperity represents the highest order of responsibility for
Mayors and city governments; and
WHEREAS, gang activity promotes a culture of drug addiction,
intimidation and violence, and inflicts widespread trauma on
citizens seeking community peace and harmony; and
WHEREAS, a comprehensive approach to controlling and reducing
gang violence requires widespread participation of business,
governments, parents, faith-based and community organizations,
schools and youth; and
WHEREAS, these community partners must deploy a continuum of
research supported, best practice strategies of preventive,
early interventive, interdictive, corrective and strict
enforcement measures to prevent, control, and reduce gang
violence; and
WHEREAS, to date federal, state, and local officials have been
required to appropriate a disproportionate amount of resource to
a primary emphasis on enforcement, control, correction, and
incapacitation measures; and
WHEREAS, the best hope of long term gang violence reduction
requires us to bolster community development, positive youth
development, skilled parenting, family wage employment, business
ownership, educational achievement, and furthering the
attachment of all citizens to a sense of community; and
WHEREAS, faith-based and community organizations can play a
critical role in designing, developing, and providing these
protective factors in the community; and
WHEREAS, in the 2005 State of the Union address President Bush
proposed a three year $150 million initiative to help at-risk
youth avoid gang involvement through community and faith-based
intervention and outreach funded through the Compassion Capital
Fund at HHS,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that The United States Conference
of Mayors calls upon all city governments to spearhead an effort
to not only maintain and enhance corrective and enforcement measures but also bring emphasis to preventing and reducing gang
violence by developing:
Effective parenting education and family support programs;
Working with business interests to develop youth employment
and career path opportunities for young people to overcome
the falsely attractive financial rewards of gang
activities;
Developing a national youth service program to engage young
people in civic participation to boost their investment in
community safety;
Marshalling faith-based and community organizations to
provide effective early childhood development programs,
elementary school reading and math enhancement activities,
mentoring of middle school and high school students, gang
resistance incentive programs, and counseling and treatment
for those youth already involved in drug use and gang
activities; and
BE IT FURTHERMORE RESOLVED, The United States Conference of
Mayors calls upon mayors from throughout the nation to work with
the Mayors Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to
develop sustainable funding strategies to support community
based prevention and youth development efforts and to support
legislative proposals to bring new resources to gang prevention
and youth development initiatives.
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