New Jersey State Library Sponsors Invitational Forum
Invitations are out for the Safe Teens = Safe Streets: New Jersey’s First Working Forum on Community Collaboration, a one-day conference, to be held on May 14, 2009, at the Mercer County Community College Conference Center, West Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Rd., West Windsor.
The purpose of this one day working forum is to bring together legislators, county prosecutors, youth services commission directors, county social services board directors, educators, gang prevention professionals, librarians, and representatives of other community agencies serving children and their families, to develop strategies and a call to action to prevent New Jersey’s children and teens from joining gangs.
Gangs are a fact in New Jersey’s rural, suburban, and urban areas with gang presence growing in all areas. The State Library is sponsoring this conference in collaboration with several other agencies and organizations to raise awareness of the role that all can play in helping to fight the problems of gangs in our state. It is hoped that this working forum will present an opportunity for collaboration for the participants and provide a stimulus to the development of new ideas and strategies that can be presented to the Office of the Attorney General’s Prevention Coordinating Council.
The conference was developed in collaboration with the East Coast Gang Investigators Association, the Gang Awareness and Intervention Network, the Juvenile Justice Commission of New Jersey, the New Jersey Department of Correction, the New Jersey Library Association Urban Libraries Section, the New Jersey State Police, and Robin’s Nest, Inc.
For more information on the conference, please contact Tina Keresztury, Associate State Librarian, at 609-278-2640, ext. 134 or tkeresztury@njstatelib.org.