| Purpose : |
The project P.E.A.C.E. (Public Education and Crime Eradication) Police Youth Workshops is an extension of the PEACE project umbrella, a crime prevention strategy initiated by the Toronto Police Service to enable youth to work with the Police and community partners to “get guns and gangs off the street”. The project will bring youth and police together to develop workshops on gun and gang violence prevention and education, and upon completion of the workshop curriculum, joint teams of youth and police would then deliver the workshops in schools, community centres and in the 17 police divisions in Toronto. Workshop development and presentation skills training will be ongoing throughout the three years of the project, providing opportunities for increased numbers of youth and police to understand each other, build relationships and improve police-youth relations. The youth involved in creating the workshops will be selected on criteria that they be high-risk, with a history of bad experiences with police and street knowledge/experience of issues related to gun and gang violence.
The workshop objectives of this initiative are to: get guns and other weapons out of the hands of young people; educate youth on the grave dangers of gang involvement; support and encourage youth to make positive law-abiding lifestyle choices and enhance positive relationships between youth and police officers. Concrete outcomes of the project include: an accompanying curriculum to the educational videos that have been produce so that police officers can use these materials elementary and secondary schools (that have had youth input in their development), public service announcements, workshops given by youth and police, skill development camps and a series of youth-generated activities and initiatives related to the momentum of the project.
|