Curtis Sliwa Quotes

Reaching out to any fellow ghetto kids is an act he puts in the same category as doing drugs: the initial rush of warmth and euphoria puts you on a path to ruin.

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.

Getting involved with the Boys and Girls Club helped keep me and my sister from getting in trouble.

I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.

With gangs, there could be a positive outlook because it takes the older guys to come school these younger guys on the right roles.

I've always been a youth advocate. I mean, that's been my brand, reaching out to young people. All my life, when I've dealt with youth I'd be thinking back to my own experience. Now I look at my kids and think forward.

Selfishly, working with kids gives me joy - it makes me feel like my life has a purpose. And I thought, Imagine what we can do in the White House, particularly with the kids in the D.C. area, many of whom have never set foot on the White House lawn.

Youth Ministry, as traditionally organized, has also suffered the impact of social changes. Young people often fail to find responses to their concerns, needs, problems and hurts in the usual structures. As adults, we find it hard to listen patiently to them, to appreciate their concerns, demands, and to speak to them in a language they can understand.

The [Steve Harvey] foundation started originally about the educational needs of children. But, as I got into it more and more, one of my main objectives became mentoring programs for young African American men because that's our problem in our community - it's the African American men.

Educators are aware that they can reach the youth only by making use of gang spirit and guiding it, not by working against it.

To criminally prosecute a child not old enough to go to the school prom makes no sense, you get much more cooperation from a victim if you give them a safe harbor, a place to live, job training, an education.

The right way to begin is to pay attention to the young, and make them just as good as possible.

I was invited to a luncheon with 49 other women to give my opinions about the problematic situation among young people. They wanted me to talk about why is there so much juvenile delinquency in the streets of America.

I'm a Prince of Wales Trust ambassador, so I'm all about giving youth an education, a voice and a chance to not take the wrong road.

I've experienced first-hand the wonderful work organizations like J Bar J do for young people in Central Oregon and I am encouraged that the federal government is taking an active role in the Cascade Youth and Family Center.

I've also been working with the Challengers Club in the inner city of Los Angeles for 15 years now, I guess, and it's essentially an inner-city recreation club for boys and girls.

Sometimes when I speak to groups or I'm interviewed by a journalist, I ask them to imagine their communities without Girl Scouts - to imagine the thousands of food drives and clothing and toy collections that would never take place if not for Girl Scouts.

Involvement in the arts engages kids in their community, improves self-esteem, reclaims at-risk youth, and builds the creative skills that are required of a 21st century workforce.

I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence.

So complex are all the ingredients that cause gang membership that it seems virtually impossible to isolate one solution that can address them all and thereby manufacture a hope for the future upon which these kids can rely.

We have to let young people know that we care about them and their future. I want to involve them to a level where they become the leaders and the advocates because, right now, a lot of these young people don't believe they have an advocate.

The task of dealing comprehensively with gangs belongs to the city, not to law enforcement.

Doing and making positive programming for young people is so important to me, and I will keep doing it.

Our Party attaches great importance to the work with young people and firmly believes in them.

I have a thing about working with young people. I adore them.