Youth Crime Reduction, Education and Prevention Program (REP)
Camp Carmangay has established a resource development relationship with key organizations in our community. These organizations include: Police Services, school principals, law enforcement resource officers and First Nations liaisons. The focus of our objectives is to register high risk youth, those of whom are either: in the justice system or are at high risk of entering into a life of criminality. The interruption of gang registration is a key issue and as a community, with Camp Carmangay at the hub, we are committed to creating opportunities that will give insight and access to acquiring the life skills a young person will require to be either be introduced or integrated into mainstream society.
Police Services from both Calgary and Lethbridge are very supportive of Camp Carmangay and our programs. On a regular basis, they not only utilize Camp Carmangay’s facilities through referrals but they have offered their mentoring strengths and services. They have participated in everything from trail guiding to barn painting. Interacting with youth, not only as police officers but as regular people, provides a comfortable atmosphere to address the benefits of alternate lifestyle choices to grand theft auto, the sex trade and most notably drug use.
Gang association has many negative social aspects such as drug use abuse and distribution, crimes against communities, teen prostitution and pregnancy, suicides and murder. Camp Carmangay is going to address these issues and provide skills and education on crime prevention, suicide prevention, independent living, employability and job placement, racism and discrimination, positive self awareness and pride in ones self. The above culmination of issues and needs we are addressing are objectives we have focused on and will address crime reduction, education and prevention. Youth who are targeted, screened and pre-qualified for risk assessment will be registered into the REP program offered at Camp Carmangay. The camp will provide an experience, structured and supervised by professionals, and each week(s) will offer a session focused and under the umbrella of life skills development and choices. Our goal is to train the untrained and employ the unemployable. Additionally to sessions at Camp Carmangay, we provide community resources to them such as job placement and further mentoring off site. Our programs are directed towards redirecting a negative and damaging lifestyle to one that is positive and productive, thus giving youth a contributing place in society.
We ask the questions: how is it a young person finds himself/herself in association with an organized gang, how it is they finds themselves addicted to drugs, what are the cause and effects? We ask our self the question how is it a young person can leave school at eighteen without having acquired the necessities of life as it pertains to employment and placement, how is it they have no skills no hope no ambition? It is a known fact that there is a segment of our youth currently attending school that will leave the institution uneducated and without the acquired skills necessary to maintain independent living. It is this particular segment that is at high risk of becoming a criminal element and/or a social burden. Our focus is to identify these young people and to train them now, to give them opportunities for employment now, to divert them away from criminal thought and/or action now, and to give them something to say yes to when we tell them to “just say no”.
Camp Carmangay has been included as part of the curriculum through various high schools and other outreach programs through the Lethbridge region. Participating youth often receive additional credits for their attendance through our programs. We are currently in discussions with a variety of high schools and private facilities in Calgary. Our program recurs throughout the course of the year with registration of ten youth per session per group. Each group will attend a minimum one day a week at Camp Carmangay then take part in resources and programs provided by their schools and law enforcement agencies while back in their communities. Through these segments we will give the opportunity each year to developing the lives of multiple youth. Camp Carmangay has been working as a resource development partner to the Blackfoot Nation in Siksika. The camp has supplied horses, canoes, materials and direction to start the building and framework of a similar program in Siksika. We are well underway to providing access to aboriginal youth to an environment like that presented at Camp Carmangay to a community that has struggled to find means by which to gather and transport their youth to our facility. Because they could not get here, we went there.
Some youth are drawn into criminal behavior out of boredom and lack of something positive to do. Youth, who are not doing well in school, can build self-esteem and confidence when they excel when they are provided the proper atmosphere. Our REP program addresses immediate needs and problems our young participants are facing every day.
The focus of the information sessions will include (but not be limited to):
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Crime Prevention Education
- Dealing with Gang Recruitment
- How to leave a Gang
- Statistics of Crime and where your life is heading
- Options of how to stay off the streets
- How to deal with Peer Pressure
- Employability Training & Job Placement opportunities
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Drug & Alcohol awareness and
education
- Dealing with your own addiction
- Dealing with a family members addiction
- “Just say No” series
- How to deal with Peer Pressure
- Living with barriers: learning disabilities, mental health issues, FASD etc.
- Life Skills: independent living skills, household financial skills, civic responsibility etc.
- Teen suicide and dealing with death
- Teen Pregnancy and sexual health issues
- Health and Wellness
