Anti Violence Dramatic Productions and Workshops

The OJJDP FY 10 Earmarks Program furthers the Department's mission by providing grants, cooperative agreements, and other assistance authorized by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, as amended, to organizations identified in the Conference Report to accompany the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010 (P.L. 111-117), H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 111-366 at 702-714.

New Freedom Theatre Performing Arts Training Program will produce, present, disseminate and perform two anti-crime dramas for youth, Safety Street and Journey of Gun. These productions will be presented on stage and will create video DVDs to be replicated and distributed throughout the country. The productions are developed as a response to the needs of inner city youth, elementary through high school, to be exposed to professional quality productions which allow them to develop confidence and expertise in being safe. The purpose is to educate through dramatic presentation options for youth that do not include gun violence as a way to solve problems. The program will benefit both youth and professionals who work with youth in the inner cities. The project seeks to provide more than 350 performances during the course of the year and thousands of DVDs. The goal of the project is to provide youth with strategies that allow them to safely traverse the inner city and develop alternative methods of dealing with dangerous situations without resorting to gun violence specifically. For the younger students, Safety Street is written to give them specific tools to employ which common sense methods to stay safe in the inner city. In the short term, the project will refine the productions so that they are immediately accessible and understandable to the youth, and provide a mechanism for professionals to develop the necessary dialogue to help youth create better methods of both conflict resolution and traversing dangerous environments. Data will be collected on increase rates of graduations and decrease in gun violence in the target communities. NCA/NCF