Save Our Streets Crown Heights (S.O.S.) Enhancement

The Fund for the City of New York/Center for Court Innovation will use FY14 State and Community Development Invited funds to both sustain and enhance the Save Our Streets (SOS) Crown Heights program. The supplemental funding will be used to sustain the Youth Organizing (YO) component of SOS Crown Heights. YO SOS Crown Heights is a youth mobilization efforts that works to empower young people, ages 14-17, to become community leaders and organizers. Through a combination of experiential workshops and service learning opportunities, participants develop the skills needed to become tomorrow's community leaders. SOS Crown Heights empowers youth as change makers by teaching leadership and community organizing skills and providing participants with key life skills, case management services, and summer job search assistance. Each year, SOS Crown Heights serves 25 young people.
NCA/NCF

OJJDP's State and Community Development (Invited) Awards program was established to provide grants and cooperative agreements to organizations that OJJDP has selected for funds in prior years. Through the Community-Based Violence Prevention Program (CBVP), OJJDP funds organizations working to reduce youth gun and gang violence through evidence-based models. These programs have been authorized by an Act appropriating funds for the Department of Justice.

In February 2010, the Crown Heights Mediation Center launched a Cure Violence replication called Save Our Streets Crown Heights (S.O.S.) to work closely with 60 individuals deemed to be at the highest risk for involvement in shooting incidents through mediation of potentially violent conflicts and provision of supportive services. As part of the program’s community mobilization effort, S.O.S. established the Clergy Action Network (CAN), a group of faith-based leaders who collaborate to reduce community violence.

The goal of the proposed Community Based Violence Prevention FY 15 supplemental faith-based enhancement is to continue to mobilize Central Brooklyn’s faith community to be an active partner in S.O.S.’s violence prevention efforts. To measure the effectiveness of this initiative, the Mediation Center will track the number of CAN members, the number of clergy members engaged in CAN activities, the number of meetings attended by the CAN clergy liaison, the number of Clergy Education workshops held, the number of anti-violence prayer events held, the number of community members (including young people) who attend events, and the number of families supported through clergy after being impacted by violence. This supplemental award will also cover travel expenses for a team representing S.O.S. to OJJDP’s fall convening of the CBVP grantees.

CA/NCF