Neighborhood Safety - Part 3

The first two posts focuses on encouraging businesses to participate with crime prevention and local neighborhoods to increase neighborhood patrols. The second post, focused on how businesses could partner with local neighborhoods to decrease the impact of homeless persons and vagrants on the neighborhood and local businesses. This post focuses on prevention. Many youth have no supervision, sense of direction in life, no positive role models or lack financial resources to focus in youth programs. Businesses can help prevent future social problems, decrease delinquency, increase graduation rates by providing resources for youth. Examples include employee sponsored mentoring programs, and youth engagement days to expose youth to the work world. Community service days would encourage a mentor from a local business to work on community service projects with a youth from the neighborhood. For safety, consider a group of three mentors and three youth on each project. This helps youth by teaching work skills, allowing them to work on a project at their neighborhood school, community center, church or synagogue. It can be graffiti removal, planting flowers in public places, helping the elderly or those with handicaps with yard work or working on an art mural for neighborhood enjoyment. To improve graduation rates, send speakers to the neighborhood school. Offer fourth graders college scholarships, start a tutoring center at neighborhood schools and coordinate the staffing. TO help vulnerable or low income youth, offer enrichment scholarships for bringing up grades, improving behavior or decreasing truancy. Enrichment scholarships allow youth to participate in scouting programs, go to Summer camp, obtain private music lessons, pay athletic fees and more. Again, keep statistics to measure outcomes. By demonstrating successful outcomes, other businesses may decide to participate. This has the potential to lives, decrease what can become life long social problems, break the cycle of poverty, help a youth become the first in the family to graduate from high school or college. It also helps prepare young people to make a positive contribution, and become employable. Businesses that provide mentors may also find it easier to recruit new employees who come recommended by the mentor.