324 Summer Jobs Will Be Created for Youth in This Zone; 322 Long-Term Jobs Will Be Created in Partnership with Consortium for Worker Education
State and Community Leaders Have Agreed on Initiatives to Respond to Ongoing Gun Violence in Identified Cluster Zones
Key Initiatives Include Creating Jobs and Summer Programs for At-Risk Youth; Increasing Presence of Violence Interveners in Community; and Expanding Community Services and Assistance for Mental Health, Substance Abuse and Family Crisis
Following today’s gun violence prevention community meeting for Manhattan, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced 646 jobs will be available for at-risk youth in nine ZIP codes that make up the zone. The ZIP codes are: 10002, 10012, 10025, 10026, 10027, 10030, 10032, 10034, and 10035.
The state will provide funding to create 324 summer jobs for youth aged 15 to 24 in this zone to keep them employed until the start of school this year. The State is also partnering with the Consortium for Worker Education to provide job training and placement into long-term jobs for 322 young people who are out of school and live in this zone.
“We cannot have a recovery in New York unless people feel safe here, and with these community-driven initiatives we are making available the work opportunities and services that can protect vulnerable New Yorkers from the gun violence epidemic,” Governor Cuomo said. “This crisis will not get resolved on its own, and that is why we are bringing everyone to the table and figuring out the specific needs of communities in Manhattan and elsewhere, with insight from residents who know their neighborhood better than anyone.”
Earlier this month, Governor Cuomo kicked off a series of community meetings that will be held in emerging gun violence hot spots across the state, where State officials and community leaders can carve out initiatives to address the ongoing gun violence. The initiatives focus on engaging the most at-risk youth in cluster zones in employment and community activities, hiring new community-based gun violence interrupters, as well as assistance for mental health and substance use disorders.
Governor Cuomo issued Executive Order No. 211 declaring gun violence a disaster emergency and requiring New York State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services to compile incident-level data provided by major police departments on a weekly basis so that it may be used by the newly established Office of Gun Violence Prevention to track emerging gun violence hot spots and deploy resources to areas most in need.
In today’s meeting for Manhattan, specific steps to combat gun violence included:
- Creating 646 jobs for youth, including 324 summer jobs and 322 long-term jobs placed in partnership with CWE;
- Establishing summer programs for youth, including more than 200 activitiesat Denny Farrell Riverbank and other state parks across New York City this summer;
- Hiring new violence interveners to work at existing community intervention programs; and
- Expanding community services and assistance for mental health support, substance abuse treatment and family crisis intervention.
On July 6, Governor Cuomo declared the first-in-the-nation gun violence disaster emergency as part of a new, comprehensive strategy to build a safer New York. This new strategy treats gun violence as a public health crisis, using short-term solutions to manage the immediate gun violence crisis and reduce the shooting rate, as well as long-term solutions that focus on community-based intervention and prevention strategies to break the cycle of violence. The disaster emergency allows the State to expedite money and resources to communities so they can begin targeting gun violence immediately.
