NCJ Number
81770
Date Published
1981
Length
101 pages
Annotation
This report describes the activities and achievements of the Youth Action Program, an LEAA-funded project of the East Harlem Block Nursery in New York City.
Abstract
The project was conducted from October 1978 through August 1981. Its goal was to mobilize young people to take responsibility for community improvement in order to increase community cohesion and to inspire hope and organized activity among the adults of the community. The project location was a classic inner-city area characterized by poverty, low educational levels, easy availability of drugs, few employment opportunities, high crime rates, and a deteriorated environment. The project created a network of 10 youth-run community improvement projects. The projects include an emergency telephone counseling service which also provides foster care placement to teenagers in crisis and a youth patrol which provides preventitive patrolling for a housing project. Additional projects include an effort to renovate an abandoned building to create a complex of services, a project to improve a large empty lot, an educational facility, a pilot program for cooperative living for homeless young men, and a youth organization providing a voice for youth in local decisionmaking. Further projects are weekend retreats outside the city, an employment program, and a peer counseling project. The project has fulfilled the program objectives of the Community Anti-Crime Program by directly and indirectly preventing crime. It has also achieved the revitalization of parts of the neighborhood. The program is ready to expand and improve in the coming years. Case illustrations of youths served by the program, a statistical summary, and appendixes presenting newspaper articles and training materials are provided.