Save our City's Youth
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Roanoke city is beautiful its fun and it’s a wonderful place to visit. Roanoke is home to roughly 97,000 and it’s the tenth largest city in the commonwealth. Roanoke is vastly becoming one of the most populated cities in Virginia but with more people unfortunately comes more crime. I lived in Roanoke all my life so I have seen it grow from a seed to a beautiful flower and I believe the soil for that flower is the people in the city. In the recent years I’ve seen the crime rate triple in violent crimes and in non violent crimes I asked myself what can I do to make sure the city is safe for my sons, daughter, and other children of the future. So what I did along with Randy Riggins Jr. was create an urban radio show with local radio station WTOY in order to get troubled kids off the street into something positive. I did my homework some would say,
I literally went to the troubled neighborhoods where most of these crimes took place and asked the residents why you think the crime rate has tripled in the last ten years and the vote was unanimous. “Young people have nothing to do in the inner city” said one resident in the northwest region. This prompted me to do a little research and see exactly how many community based events are held in Roanoke city’s under privileged neighborhoods. After months of research I was astonished that the city of Roanoke has no community based events in those same troubled neighborhoods. Like my father always told me an idled mind is the devils playground we need to help the youth get more creative and get more active or we will see the city get worse. It shouldn’t matter what side of town you live in to generally care about other people especially those in poverty if we don’t help them who will. With charitable efforts we can change the soil of the city the problem isn’t the people in the city it’s the mind frame of the people in the city. With more effort from Roanoke as a community we can get the crime rate back down we can get more under privileged kids off the streets. We need black and white citizens working together as well as the rich and poor working together to better the city. The goal is to shape America for the next generation and at this rate the next generation might not survive…..To be Continued
Save our City's Youth Part I
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