Youth Development & Enrichment: CSI Youth Empowerment Academy

CSI Youth Empowerment Academy is a training system designed to empower and educate young people in the following areas:

  • Personal Growth and Development

  • Leadership Skills

  • Creativity

  • Entrepreneurial skills/Financial Literacy

  • Civic Education

  • Youth and the Criminal Justice System

  • Charity, Community building, and Volunteerism

Goals of the CSI Youth Empowerment Academy

  • Will instill positive social and economic values in our youth that will make our communities a better place to live, both today, and in the future.

  • Allows youth from various economic and social backgrounds to get to know one another thereby building community across divides.

  • Provides a forum for youth to express ideas, to get creative, and to be heard

  • When youth participate in the curriculum, leadership skills and self-confidence are enhanced; the youth will also walk away with a set of goals.

  • Through civic learning, the youth become informed about the political and electoral process, which will increase the likelihood of them becoming an educated voter.

  • By being educated about the criminal justice system, it will help to insure that the youth do not become a product of that system.

CSI  Youth Division introduces new program:
Children Of Reentry (C.O.R.E.) 

Our Youth Program is especially designed for youth ages 14-24 that are either:

  • Currently incarcerated or formerly incarcerated

  • Have one or more parents incarcerated or formerly incarcerated.

  • Teen Parents.

  • Gang involved or high risk of being involved

The C.O.R.E. Program has 5 KEY components designed to motivate, support, and encourage participants to achieve their “Personal Success Plan” through organized, systematic, structured training and mentorship. Participants learn how to become self sufficient, achieving goals in education, career, and personal development.
Click here for the CORE brochure.

Children Defense Fund "Promising Models for Reforming Juvenile Justice Systems"

http://www.childrensdefense.org/policy-priorities/juvenile-justice 

Nationally, one in three Black boys and one in six Latino boys born in 2001 are at risk of going to prison during their lifetimes. Although boys are more than five times as likely to be incarcerated as girls, the number of girls in the juvenile justice system is significant and growing. This shamefully high incarceration rate of Black youths is endangering our children at younger and younger ages and poses a huge threat to our nation's future. America's cradle to prison pipeline is putting thousands of young people on a trajectory that leads to marginalized lives, imprisonment, and often premature death.

The Children's Defense Fund's

Cradle to Prison Pipeline® Crusade is committed to dismantling the pipeline, however long it takes. First, we must prevent children from entering the pipeline. Then we must help children already trapped in the pipeline find a way out rather than locking them into a lifelong spiral of arrest and incarceration.

Mentor Training for Youth Mentors

The following material focuses on training new mentors, and includes suggested activities for two workshops that, together, add up to between five and six hours of training. Because the tone of a mentor-youth relationship can be set quickly during the first few meetings, it is important that some training take place before the two begin to meet. Thus, the activities included here are intended as preservice training. The next technical assistance packet in this series will discuss ongoing training for mentors, as well as other forms of program support.
Click here to download this pdf report.

The "Ready By 21 Approach" The Forum for Youth Investment

The Ready by 21 Approach brings together leaders from across a community and offers proven frameworks, tools and coaching to engage these leaders where they are — building on their current initiatives and resources — and equipping them to think and act differently to improve outcomes for children and youth. 
Click here to access this website.

Public Education Network

To build public demand and mobilize resources for quality public education for all children through a national constituency of local education funds and individuals.
Click here for link.

R.A.G.S. Productions (Reaching Artistic Goals Successfully)

RAGS mission is to deter youth from deviant behavior through mediums of performing arts.  To read more about the Founder, Rosa Bryant, and her story, click here for a pdf file. To read the RAGS Productions pamphlet, click here . To read a recent Triangle Tribune article on Rosa and R.A.G.S Productions, click here.

State should raise age for charging juveniles as adults, study says

An article in the Winston-Salem Journal notes that a recent report of the Youth Accountability Task Force finds that North Carolina and New York are the only states that automatically prosecute 16- and 17-year-olds as adults. Ten states treat offenders under 17 as juveniles and the remaining 38 states set the juvenile age at under 18. To read the article at ww2.journalnow.com, click here.

Sex and The Law, What every teen and parent need to discuss and consider.

Statutory rape laws have been enacted to protect minors from sexual abuse from either adults or peers. The intent of the laws when they were passed was to protect minors from coercive and involuntary sexual activity. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that some teenagers engage in sexual activity even before they reach the legally defined age of consent. In the eyes of the law, persons below that age cannot give “consent.” Given the changing mores in this country and the increasing acceptance by teenagers of early sexual intimacies, more and more young people are finding themselves facing sexual assault charges, whether or not either partner feels victimized. States have responded to these cases in a variety of ways. This report presents an overview of the efforts to handle such cases and calls attention to suggested ways to address the dilemmas caused by the laws as they are written. Click here for the report in pdf.

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