Mayor Ras J. Baraka, NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown, advocate-author Aqeela Sherrils, Health and Community Wellness Director Dr. Hanaa Hamdi, Rutgers University-Newark, PSE&G, and the Victoria Foundation launched the Newark Community Street Team initiative at the Little City Hall, at 570 Clinton Avenue, in the City’s South Ward this past Friday.
The Newark Community Street Team is a six-month initiative that will place 15 outreach workers in the South Ward Model Neighborhood Initiative area (Clinton Hill) to assist approximately 100 individuals who are seeking to stabilize their lives and turn away from a life of crime. The outreach workers will provide mentoring, life skills, and case management to participants.
“We are putting hands and hearts to work in our South Ward to help lives at-risk and in need,” Mayor Baraka said. “We are bringing these residents hope and empowerment, as well as the tools they need to live productive lives. I am grateful to our partners and supporters, like Jim Brown and Aqeela Sherrils, for their leadership in this initiative. Soon we will bring this program to all of our neighborhoods, and put even more caring and committed street workers into our Wards, to directly and personal transform Newark into a City we can all believe in.”
The program will provide safe passage to high school students at South Ward high schools in the mornings and afternoons, to ensure that students arrive and leave school safety. It will also host community events in the Model Neighborhood, and organize a community task force to connect law enforcement agencies with the community.
The program will operate first in the South Ward Model Neighborhood Initiative area, and then in all five wards. It will be headquartered in the South Ward Boys and Girls Club, and is headed by Tyrone Barnes, a Newarker with great experience in training prison officials, counseling at-risk youth, and assisting pre-release prisoners and re-entering offenders, with mentoring, life skills, and supportive counseling. Mr. Barnes is also a member of the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition.
Mr. Sherrils, who brokered the 1992 gang truce between the Bloods and Crips in Los Angeles, is the project director. He most recently launched “The Reverence Movement,” which is focused on instituting a practice of authentic exploration of the wounds in the personal life as a means of accessing the gift of who we are by not defining ourselves as our experience.
Mr. Brown’s AmerICan non-profit’s curriculum, which is designed to assistant participants with becoming a more successful person at reaching one’s full potential.
Partnerships have been established between the street team and Newark municipal agencies to link participants with City services and training programs. The Victoria Foundation, PSE&G, and Rutgers University-Newark are providing funding.
photo credit | City of Newark Press Office
