The awareness campaign aims to further contribute in building socially responsible young people, as an important strategy to ensure a sustained and long term challenge to crime in the province.
The campaign will focus on:
- Raising awareness about the impact of crime amongst youth, Raising awareness on the detrimental impact of crime and reasons why young people should avoid becoming involved in crime, and
- Mobilising young people to actively participate in fighting crime through participating in local policing and other development community forums.
With this campaign we as young people say:
- NO to violence against woman and children
- NO to abuse and exploitation of young people
- NO to child prostitution
- NO to gangs and gangsterism
- NO to abuse of alcohol, drugs and other substances
- NO to petty crime and theft.
The youth of the province will no longer remain mere victims of crime. We will become warriors against crime. We will fight against the exploitation of our peers by unscrupulous characters who feel nothing for the future of our country and our youth.
The campaign will run for two weeks following its launch on 3 December 2006 in Khayelitsha, and will also be rolled out to Harare, Manenberg, Brooklyn, Ruyterwacht and Paarl.
These communities were selected to participate in the programme in collaboration with the relevant stakeholders and according to recent crime trends and patterns and the level of youth organisation and capacity in the area.
The following activities amongst others will take place:
- Training of community safety volunteers
- Excursions for young people from the designated areas
- Neighbourhood watch patrols
- Door to door canvassing
- Marches against crime.
In programme was developed in partnership with stakeholders such as the Department of Justice, Department of Community Safety, Department of Correctional Services, SAPS, Community Policing Forums, City of Cape Town, Youth Development Forums and Community Based Organisations.
Crime in the Western Cape has seen a reduction of 17 % over the past year.
Young people have contributed in many ways to achieve this target as members of Community Policing Forums, Neighbourhood Watch Patrols, Bambanani, and Witness Programmes and also as part of Law Enforcement Agencies.
The Commission is encouraged by the decision taken by many young people in various communities to be law abiding citizens, not involving themselves in criminal activities and challenging any message claiming that crime is the only option available to them.
The Commission is saddened by the fact that often young people, who are the most vulnerable sector of our society, still become involved in crime as perpetrators and fall victim to offences. Young people still represent the largest number of people in prisons and the majority of first arrestees.
However, the time has come for young people to muster all their strength and courage to increasingly take up their role as partners of all agencies and role-players working for safer communities in the Western Cape.
The Commission recognises that as much as young people in 1976 challenged oppression by an unjust system, young people today battle for freedom from criminal injustice, crime and violence.
Thus it is with the set resolve and spirit of endurance of the generation of 1976, that the Commission through this Youth against Crime Campaign will call on and encourage young people to push back crime.
Inquiries:
Vincent Domingo
Chairperson
Tel: 083 274 9506
Rudi Buys
Commissioner
Tel: 082 448 5984
Issued by:
Rudi Buys
CommissionerWestern Cape Youth Commission
tel 021 466 9568
fax 021 418 2702
cell 082 448 5984
10th Floor, Golden Acre, Cape Town
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