Chicago's $60 million dollar investment to stop youth violence

The city of Chicago is going to be investing sixty million dollars over two years on 10,000 kids they have identified as being most likely targets of violence (Article printed in Star Tribune). They will be giving these teens additional adult attention, jobs and a local advocate that will be on call for them 24 hours a day.

This action is being taken with hopes of impacting the rampant violence among Chicago's youth. There have been 67 deaths since 2007 from youth violence while hundreds of others have survived shootings and beatings on their way home from school.

The city of Minneapolis has its own plan to quell youth violence, entitled the Blueprint for Action: Preventing Youth Violence in Minneapolis. The four key areas of focus for this plan are as follows:

*Connect every youth with a trusted adult,
*Intervene at the first sign that youth are at risk for violence,
*Restore youth who have gone down the wrong path, and
*Unlearn the culture of violence in our community.

Kinship has an active role with this plan in helping connect youth with trusted adults. When we match up kids with adults who will be a positive, steady influence in their lives, they are much more likely to get headed toward successful lives and less likely to end up as victims or perpetrators of violence. Kinship's also got a special focus on mentoring children of prisoners, who without intervention are seven times more likley than their peers to enter the correctional system.

If you're looking to stop the violence, please consider becoming a mentor to one of the more that 140 kids on our waiting list who are all eager to have an adult friend.