Guelph Police Service Youth Engagement Program

The Guelph Police Service Youth Engagement program began on September 30, 2014 and comes to end December 9, 2014. It was an eleven week program where 28 Guelph youth who represented all eight city high schools as well as one in Waterloo Region came together to learn about policing and to build relationships with police officers.

The program included speakers from the Guelph Police Service as well as speakers from various community partners. The purpose of the police presentations was to give the participants a better understanding of what police officers do and why they do it. Presentations included:

-University of Waterloo professor – A Reason to Hope: Antisocial Behavior and Youth in Conflict with the Law

-YCJA/Know your Rights – John Howard Society community speakers

-Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit with community guest speaker from GGH Sex Assault/Domestic Violence Treatment Centre

-Drug Unit

-Training Unit – Use of Force

-Traffic Unit

-Child Exploitation and Technical Crimes

-Criminal Justice – Provincial Court Judge, Crown Attorney and Defense Counsel at court house

-Tactical Response Unit/Fitness Pin test

-Forensic Identification Unit

After the presentations each night, the participants were put into groups where they picked a topic that affects youth in their schools and community. Each week they were given time to work on a group project that they will have to present to their parents/guardians on the graduation night being held on Tuesday, December 9, 2014 at 7:00 pm at Bishop Macdonell High School.

A number of Guelph police officers volunteered their time each night to mentor the youth and act as resources while they worked on their group assignments.

The participants will be presented with a certificate, t-shirt and 10 hours that will go toward their 40 hour community service hours they need to graduate.

The Youth Engagement Program was developed in support of two main pillars of the Guelph Police Service 2013-2015 Strategic Business Plan, Neighbourhood Policing and Community & Organizational Communication. The program helped us to accomplish some key objectives within the ‘community based crime prevention through youth outreach’ and ‘community communication’ subheadings of the plan. We are proud of the young people who successfully completed this mentoring program and we appreciate that we had the opportunity to connect and share with these participants.

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