Youth Safety Corps

Contrary to many people's beliefs, the latest national statistics show that schools are relatively safe spaces for students to be. Nonetheless, hazards still exist. Not only do many students still encounter crime, violence, and drugs while at school and traveling to and from school, they also face bullying, teasing, isolation, personal property vandalism, and theft. As attendance and academic performance are closely linked to how safe students perceive their school environment to be, it is critical that maintaining safe and secure schools be a priority agenda for schools, communities, parents, and young people themselves.

TCC's club model, the Youth Safety Corps Club (YSC), provides young people with ongoing, active involvement in TCC and the opportunity to design and implement crime, violence, and drug abuse prevention projects. The mission of YSC is to recruit, train, and mobilize a diverse student population to improve the learning environment of America's schools by designing and running projects to prevent youth crime, violence, and drug abuse.

Activites of the Youth Safety Corps Club

The core of YSC activity is the development of youth and adult school-based teams that are focused on the prevention of crime, violence, and drug abuse in their schools and communities.

Students will

• Participate in a highly interactive YSC training session by national trainers
• Conduct school safety audits that look at both social climate and physical climate issues affecting school safety to determine needs and priorities
• Identify school problems and concerns, such as bullying or poorly lit hallways
• Develop a school plan to address issues of concern, including goals and objectives
• Iimplement activities, events, and projects to address school safety issues
• Evaluate their activities, events, and projects, possibly through student designed surveys.

What Youth Safety Corps Members are Doing

YSC members in middle and high schools have:

• Designed and displayed anti-hate posters along the hallways of their school
• Produced public services announcements about fighting and bullying
• Developed programs to greet and serve as buddies to new students, making them feel more welcomed and safer in a new school
• Served as peer mentors

Tools

Youth Safety Corps Implementation Toolkit
This handy toolkit is designed to help start Youth Safety Corps in your school. The kit includes information on identifying the safety problems in your school; developing a project that addresses that problem, including setting goals, objectives, plans, and timelines and determining what help you need and who can provide it; evaluating your success; and getting the word out. The kit examines eight specific skill building areas and 12 project examples.

Charting Success: A Workbook for Developing Service-learning Projects
This workbook is designed for teens to use as they select, plan, and carry out service-learning projects. It can be used as a stand-alone workbook and guide, or it can be used with the service-learning sessions in Community Works, the curriculum of the Teens, Crime, and the Community initiative.