The Coalition is an ecumenical group of Christian clergy and lay leaders working to mobilize the Christian community around issues affecting Black and Latino youth -- especially those at-risk for violence, drug abuse and other destructive behaviors.

The Coalition’s goal is not to replace the local church, but to make the local church more effective in the work of rebuilding of communities. It also seeks to build partnerships with community-based, governmental, and private sector institutions which are also committed to the revitalization of the families and communities in which our youth must be raised.

The following programs have been implemented by the Coalition’s 52 church and parachurch members: street outreach programs; court advocacy and mentoring programs; economic development; health center partnerships; neighborhood crime watch support; male and female gang intervention programs; suburban and downtown to inner city church partnerships.^[1]

THE TEN POINTS:

1. Adopting youth gangs.
2. Sending mediators and mentors for Black and Latino juveniles into the local courts, schools, juvenile detention facilities, and the streets.
3. Commissioning youth workers to do street level work with drug dealers and gang leaders.
4. Developing concrete and specific economic alternatives to the drug economy.
5. Building linkages between downtown and suburban churches and inner-city churches and ministries.
6. Initiating and supporting neighborhood crime watches.
7. Developing partnerships between churches and community health centers that would, for example, facilitate counseling for families and individuals under stress, offer abstinence-oriented prevention programs for sexually transmitted diseases, or provide substance abuse prevention and recovery programs.
8. Establishing brotherhoods and sisterhoods as a rational alternative to violent gang life.
9. Establishing rape crisis drop-in centers, services for battered women, and counseling for abusive men.
10. Developing a Black and Latino curriculum, with an additional focus on the struggles of women and poor people as a means of increasing literacy and enhancing self-esteem in young people.