AURORA | As much as $500,000 is now up for grabs for organizations willing to partner with the City of Aurora to address youth violence intervention and prevention, according to a city news release.
The announcement came after the City Council approved the reorganization of Aurora’s Youth Violence Prevention Program along the lines of an earlier anti-gang effort earlier this week.
Portrait by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
The council also opted to dedicate around $400,000 of the funding, which is from marijuana tax revenues, to intervention programming and the remaining $100,000 to prevention.
“As youth violence continues to be a public health crisis that affects the whole community, it is critical that we partner with providers who take a holistic approach to serve youth, families and communities that are most adversely hurt by youth violence,” program manager Christina Amparan said in the release.
“For Aurora to address the rise of youth violence and to have short- and long-term impact, a comprehensive, multi-layered, multi-disciplinary, collaborative approach is required of everyone involved.”
Applications for funding are being accepted through March 28. Interested organizations should register to attend one of three virtual information sessions being held 9-11 a.m. on March 4, noon-2 p.m. on March 7 and 2-4 p.m. on March 11.
According to the release, intervention efforts that could benefit from funding include outreach to groups involved in violent incidents, hospital-based engagement with victims of violence, specialized mental health treatment, and skills training and crisis services for families.
Prevention efforts could include programming in schools, faith-based implementation of safe havens, community engagement activities and youth programming.
The online application and more information is available at AuroraGov.org/EmpoweringYouth. People with questions about the application process can also contact the city at yvpprogram@auroragov.org.
I’m just wondering. Does our city ever get assistance or advice from other cities on such matters, or do we think we know everything and try to go it alone? It seems we do a lot of arguing and blaming and nothing substantive ever gets done, or we just keep making the same mistakes repeatedly. We are not alone or unique in our problems, from violence, gangs, schools, homelessness, etc. Surely, other progressive cities have ideas or have tried different things. It seems we could benefit from collaboration on such matters, but I know that’s a bad word and people just don’t do that much these days.
It also seems that the majority of our issues cry out for area-wide communication and solutions through some agency such as the Denver Regional Council of Governments. We are all in this mess together, after all.
Screw that! Stop coddling these punks and treat them like adults when they commit crimes!