The stakes are high
Comments
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If history is an accurate guide, Bloomberg appears to make good bets with his personal money.
....perhaps he is expanding the ways in which he measures Return On Investment.
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Mr Williams points out that the program is already a year old, yet states is has not improved his neighborhood.
Did he think this was going to be quick? Has he put in an application to work at one of the nonprofits that has received awards?
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As much as I hate to applaud him, Louis Farrakhan had the right idea with his million man march. The only problem was that the only men who showed up were people who already agreed with him. The ones that needed to be changed were no where to be seen.
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By attempting to provide social services to the NYC population most at risk of violence, Bloomberg has become a larger target for politicians who oppose his every move.
It's understandable, but sort of ironic.
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More contracts awarded:
Probation Selects Phase II AIM Providers
The New York City Department of Probation (DOP) has selected two organizations that are eligible to operate AIM (Advocate, Intervene, Mentor) programs. AIM is an intensive mentoring and advocacy program for young people on probation. Participants are placed with advocates who provide structure and guidance while connecting them to untapped community resources. The groups are:
• Union Settlement Association, serving Manhattan (CD # 9, 10, 11 & 12), and
• Fund for the City of New York/ Center for Court Innovation, serving Staten Island (CD # 1 & 2)
AIM is part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's Young Men's Initiative. The program serves adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 who are facing a violation of probation due to chronic absenteeism and/or chronic unresponsiveness to interventions and engagement strategies. In addition to being under the supervision of a Probation Officer, each AIM participant will be paired with an advocate. Advocate/mentors will work with no more than four young people at a time; help build and strengthen social bonds between the client and the community in which they live; and will be available to the youth and their families 24/7.
It is In Phase One of the program, three organizations received awards: Community Mediation Services to serve Jamaica, Queens; Good Shepherd Services to serve East New York, Brooklyn; and Youth Advocate Programs to Serve the South Bronx.
http://www.nynp.biz/index.php/breaking-news/11115-probation-selects-phase-ii-aim-providers
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More jobs are posted: http://www.socialservice.com/jobdetails.cfm?jid=54329
Program Director
Union Settlement Association -
NYC Probation Opens South Bronx NeON
The New York City Department of Probation opened the new South Bronx Neighborhood Opportunity Network (NeON) yesterday. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Probation Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi were on hand for the ribbon cutting. The NeONs are a central element of both Mayor Bloomberg's Young Men's Initiative (YMI) and a major transformation of the Probation Department's operations and culture.
NeONs are community-based probation offices in the neighborhoods where probation clients live, connecting them to local programs, opportunities and resources. Historically, probation offices have been located near courthouses, requiring clients to travel to see their probation officers. With this city-wide transformation, probation offices are being brought into the communities where they are needed, providing ongoing and direct support for clients as well as opportunities and resources.
Each NeON is connected to a network of education, business and community-based organizations – such as literacy and skills building programs, work and employment preparation, health care, academic and technical education and mentoring. These resources are designed to strengthen the young person's connection to neighborhood, family and employment, as well as improve their sense of self-worth and keep them from returning to the criminal justice system. The rate at which New York City probation clients violate the terms of their probation is a third of the statewide rate – 6 percent as compared to 19 percent – and this initiative will further build on the City's success.
Mayor Bloomberg opened the first NeON in Brownsville in December 2011; since then, the Department of Probation has opened additional NeONs in Harlem and South Jamaica. The South Bronx NeON features a Resource Hub, a vibrantly decorated and resource-rich space where clients can make the most of the time before and after they meet with their probation officer. The Mayor made the announcement at the South Bronx Neighborhood Opportunity Network, where he was joined by Department of Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Edna Wells Handy, Assembly Members Eric Stevenson and Carmen Arroyo, State Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson, Bronx County Supreme Court Justice Efrain Alvarado, Lonni Tanner, Director of See ChangeNYC, and Maurice Good, Program Director of the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation.
"The opening of the South Bronx Neighborhood Opportunity Network – the fourth new community network we've opened this year – will help more people on probation get their lives back on track, and avoid returning to the justice system.” said Mayor Bloomberg. "As part of our Young Men's Initiative, these new networks are already proving effective in Harlem, South Jamaica and Brownsville. We expect that the impact will be just as great here in the South Bronx and, with the goal of reducing recidivism, help us keep making the safest big city in the nation even safer.”
"A key component of the Neighborhood Opportunity Networks is connecting people to partner organizations to help strengthen their ties to the community,” said Deputy Mayor Gibbs. "We want to help support these young men as they further their education, improve their health, gain successful employment s and make responsible decisions for themselves and their families.”
"The South Bronx NeON embodies the NYC Department of Probation's community-based approach to ensuring public safety,” said Commissioner Schiraldi. "It's not just that we are moving into neighborhoods where our clients live – thanks to the Young Men's Initiative, we are also connecting them to local programs that can help them earn their GED or high school diploma, get a job, or connect with a mentor.”
For more on the Probation Department's efforts to decentralize and enhance its operations -- and the range of new programs it is operating through the Young Men's Initiative -- see "The Probation Transformation" in the upcoming September issue of NYNP.
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NEW YORK — Nearly 4,000 young people have participated in the first year of a sweeping effort to help young minority men in ways ranging from job internships to inmate education, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.
Financed partly with the billionaire mayor's own money, the three-year, $127 million Young Men's Initiative is intended to lower poverty, crime, unemployment and dropout rates among black and Latino males between 16 and 24.
The effort takes aim at a host of what officials see as underlying problems. Its year-one report describes initiatives as diverse as a "fatherhood academy" at a community college and a directive erasing criminal-history questions from initial employment applications for many city agencies. The idea is aimed at fields in which a conviction might not be relevant.
Minority advocates have praised Young Men's Initiative as extending a hand to a group burdened by problems that have persisted over generations. But others have questioned the project's fairness and effectiveness.
Bloomberg said he was encouraged by the work so far — at this early stage, mainly changing policies and starting programs.
"In our first year, we've made real progress," he said at a news conference at a Brooklyn detention center for juvenile offenders.
Some 45 youngsters are now living at the juvenile center and in other facilities overseen by the city, instead of state-run centers that often were farther from their families and gave educational credits that didn't transfer to city schools, city officials said. The city pushed for a state law that allowed the local alternative, starting last month.
Other aspects of the program include planning for eight new high schools with an emphasis on helping young black and Hispanic teens succeed; engaging minority men as anti-violence advocates in three areas so far; and opening four upbeat, employment-focused probation offices thus far in neighborhoods, instead of the often-drab spots in courthouses.
"I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but this room is somewhere I'm happy to be," probationer Anthony Berrios, 17, said at the September opening at one of the overhauled offices, in the South Bronx.
Officials say they have good reason to focus on the city's young black and Hispanic men: Their poverty rate has been 50 percent higher, their unemployment rate 60 percent higher, and their dropout and teen fatherhood rates also higher than those of their white and Asian peers, according to a report when the initiative started in August 2011.
"We cannot continue to walk away from this population," Bloomberg said Thursday. "These are kids who have troubles, and if we don't help them, their lives will be a cycle of disaster, but it will also impact your life and my life and our kids' lives."
But some observers have questioned whether the $67 million might have been better spent on other ways to address disadvantage — and whether it is right to focus on one demographic.
"Discrimination is never a benefit. ... It's in (proponents') minds that black and Hispanic men need their charity because they have these stereotypes about black and Hispanic men as being criminals, as being undereducated," said Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, a group that has complained previously about other city programs aimed at black men and girls.
The city says the Young Men's Initiative programs don't specifically exclude other ethnic groups or women, though they often are positioned to affect 16-to-24-year-old black or Hispanic men. Statistics weren't immediately available on how many people from other demographics have participated.
— Associated Press
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tick, tick, tick.
Thats the sound of social unrest arriving in a few years if we don't address the problem of unemployed, unattached, broke NYC youth:
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Here's a paid internship program that has been created with the funding:
http://www.nynp.biz/index.php/breaking-news/13341-obt-expands-yaip-to-bedford-stuyvesant.html
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...paid for by YMI and other funding sources
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Obama has announced a similar program.
It closely resembles Bloomberg's....
http://www.ebony.com/news-views/will-obamas-my-brothers-keeper-plan-work-405#axzz2uvkO0G2Z
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