City of North Battleford Community Safety Co-ordinator Herb Sutton’s highlighted the work of the Battlefords Youth Network in his monthly report to council delivered at the April 23 council meeting.
It’s an initiative that Sutton says is much needed in the community.
“Finding a youth voice has been an important role for some time,” said Sutton.
“Most agree we need to work with the youth in our community both from a community safety perspective, but also from a healthy community perspective, and the Battlefords Youth Network is a very exciting initiative that leads us down that road.”
The network has been bringing together agencies and organizations that are working with youth to share information and identify and fill gaps.
One of the initiatives is a youth survey, which gathers information on youth perception of the community, what the youth of the community feel they need, and what the community can do to better meet the needs of youth.
The surveys have now been collected and the data should be available by the end of May. Sutton said he will report on it or the co-chairs of the Battlefords Youth Network will.
As well, they plan to host a breakfast featuring Children’s Advocate Corey O’Soup. The plan is for it to be at the Gold Eagle Events Centre on the morning of May 11. Sutton said more details will be shared.
The Battlefords Youth Network is also planning to hold a youth forum, possibly in June as a follow-up to the youth survey. He said feedback would be sought on strategies to address the issues that arose.
A second item Sutton focused on was the Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Review Committee. This initiative currently had 12 members and includes all the key departments of the city as well as the RCMP and the downtown. The plan for the group is to once again encourage “block parties” in 2018 to get people to know their neighbours and to continue the formalized neighbourhood initiative.
CPTED training is also happening in the fall for members of the committee to learn about use of CPTED principles.
Finally, Sutton reported on the SAGE initiative — Safety Acceptance Guidance Empowerment.
The final report from the Coalition Design Workshop from Feb. 27-28 has just come in, Sutton said, and is literally hot off the press. The mayor has a copy of it already and the recommendations will be shared with the rest of council.
