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YOUTHS TO SHARE CRIME, SAFETY IDEAS WITH WEED & SEED

By Wes Clement/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Monday, August 18, 2008 9:39 AM CDT

At the next meeting of Pine Bluff Weed and Seed, a group of local youths will share ideas with program leaders on practical crime reduction and neighborhood safety gained from attending a recent youth leadership camp.

Pine Bluff teenagers Dominique Whitmore, Joey Gardner and Courtney Newby attended the fifth annual Weed and Seed Youth Leadership Camp hosted by the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise of Washington, D.C.

The camp, sponsored by U.S. Department of Justice and CNE, was held July 19-26 at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., allowing its 75 youth participants from the country’s Weed and Seed neighborhoods an opportunity for roundtable discussions about the issues they face, classroom teaching and leadership training, said Cynthia Whitmore, the adult sponsor who accompanied the youths.

“They learned about the Weed and Seed area around us and how they can better the community. They learned a variety of different things they can participate in to help improve the community such as safe haven houses, teen pregnancy awareness, drug awareness and non-violence,” said Whitmore.

Joey Gardner, a Pine Bluff High School student who is considering a career in civil engineering, said the group from Pine Bluff was most interested in addressing the issue of teen pregnancy in their community.

“There’s already a program at the school. You can tell people to have safe sex, but there’s really no such thing except for marriage,” Gardner said.

Among the many things the youths discussed at the camp, Gardner said one that stood out was “learning about the ‘Seven habits for effective teens.’ Seek first to understand, then be understood,” he said was the one most meaningful to him.

Gardner will be enrolled in Advanced Placement calculus this year and hopes to attend the camp next summer in Washington where the youth will speak to legislators.

“They dealt with a lot of things they see in their neighborhoods and tried to come up with ways to deal with that as a young person,” said Rev. Jesse Turner, director of Pine Bluff Weed and Seed.

The students were given surveys that questioned them on the ease of getting drugs in their neighborhoods, the level of violence in the neighborhoods, teen pregnancy and other issues. The responses were then compiled by CNE and distributed to Weed and Seed offices around the country to provide information on what youth are experiencing, Turner said.

The Pine Bluff youth who attended the camp were members of the King Team, a community non-violence program of the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission.

“They do community service and go to nursing homes from time to time to read and sing and pass out fruit or candy,” said Whitmore. The team is also responsible for the annual MLK parade, she added.

Following four days of instruction and group participation, the group spent a day at Disney World then a day at Daytona Beach. The camp also featured a sports day, said Whitmore.

Gardner said he doesn’t know how teen pregnancy should be addressed, but is interested in discussing the issue with Turner when they come together at the next Weed and Seed meeting.

Weed and Seed is a community-based strategy designed to prevent, control and reduce violent crime, drug abuse and gang activity in designated high crime neighborhoods across the country.

The components of the strategy are law enforcement, community policing, “prevention, intervention and treatment” and neighborhood restoration, Turner said.

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