Is CYDP Doing Its Job?

Dianne Finnegan

According to Finnegan, millions of dollars have been invested into organizations and institutions that work with at risk youths and gang members to curb criminal activities, with no success. Finnegan says that if organizations, such as the Conscious Youth Development Program, were doing their job, there wouldn’t be a need for independent mediation.

Dianne Finnegan, Mediator

“Let’s just do it at CYDP; that’s where we held the session with Majestic Alley. Not one staff member of CYDP attended that session; not one, and we were right in the conference room. The week continued with those interventions and not one single day, any of the staff of CYDP and they were well informed that we were doing those interventions.  In 2008, I was one of the board members at CYDP. Myself, Mose Hyde, several of us were a part of that board so we knew what the agenda of CYDP was all about. And again, it is not an issue to work together in unit if our focus and purpose is about country and about bringing peace to this country. My thing is millions of dollars have been invested in these countries through these organizations to work in the area of citizens’ security, of bringing some kind of calm where crime and violence is concerned. Yet today, and I want to make this very, very clear, I cannot understand why today, a ten-year-old is holding a gun. Not just holding a gun, but pulling a trigger.”