2. Minutes 3/5/10 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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South Bend Redevelopment Commission Regular Meeting –March 5, 2010 leader; I’m an ex-drug dealer; I’m an ex- everything. Before Project Impact got funded that first year I was part of Men of Scars for about six or seven years. Just being in a new environment that a lot of young guys don’t have helped me change my life totally around. By me being able to be on outreach work for Project Impact, we were not able to just work with older ex-felons, we were also able to work with the younger people, the ones that are really tearing up South Bend. Just through this first year… there are a lot of errors that we realize we can learn from, that we can do better at if we can continue doing what we’re doing now. I believe that in this next year we really can see a change happen in South Bend from the youth up through the older guys, because the main thing is to just stop recidivism, period. It’s a shame that when you sit back and look at our city… look at South Bend, as small as it is, for it to be one of the worst cities in the United States. If we don’t have the right group of people together to go out there and make the right kind of impact, it’s going to get worse. They’re not going to be just in South Bend, it’s going to spread farther and farther. I believe that if we can continue to do this, we can see a whole lot of stuff change in South Bend and we can reverse the trend in South Bend. We need this outreach part. We need this family-like atmosphere created through Project Impact because you don’t just come in and it’s a program, and you go home. But, we continue to check on them, we continue to call them, we continue to be with them. I spend a lot of time going to court with a lot of the guys. I spend a lot of time picking them up, taking them where they need to go. If they need a ride to work, I tell them, don’t worry about it. You get the job, we’re going to get you there. I just 9