With school out and summer heating up, bored kids get into trouble, sometimes with guns. After a signal from Mayor Jim Langfelder that the way to address teen violence is with activities and summer jobs, activists in several meetings I’ve been in recently discuss ways to help. As the discussion turns to the difficulty finding volunteers willing to work with teenagers, those who think in terms of establishing programs start brainstorming funding sources to pay people to take on the work. Inevitably they think of established programs that serve younger children as a place from which funds could be diverted to work with teens. They don’t realize that even seemingly successful programs to help low-income children are just scraping by. We need instead to expand the number of people willing to get involved, and expand the funding base for programs to help children of all ages. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and CEO
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2017.
