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Other LNVB Projects
The Chicago Public School Veteran Engagement Project
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The Recent beating death of Chicago Public School student Derrion Albert has shown us that we need to engage our youth more than ever. More specifically we must provide a safe atmosphere for our youth as they return from school. No one is more suited to do this than Veterans. That is why Leave No Veteran Behind (LNVB) is continuing our partnership with the Chicago Public Schools this year to provide safe passage for our youth.  This partnership was developed in order to have veterans conduct presence patrols in the historic neighborhood of Bronzeville. These patrols are designed to provide safe passage for CPS students leaving school and promote positive after school opportunities. The neighborhood of Bronzeville was ideal for this partnership because it contains 10 schools that converge on the same public transportation routes. This convergence of unattended youth has made the security situation difficult, leading to violence that has claimed the lives of several students.
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Veterans allied with Leave No Veteran Behind work in conjunction with: the Chicago Police Department, CPS crossing guards, the CPS community outreach program, the Bronzville Neighborhood Association, and various veteran organizations to mitigate and deescalate situations that lead to violence. Our focus as an organization is not necessarily to provide security, but to provide an adult presence in the hope that positive engagement with our youth will have a greater impact than police security interaction.
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While Leave No Veteran Behind is a national organization, which provides educational debt relief for veterans, we have strong roots in the city of Chicago. Both the executive director and the director of operations are products of the south side of Chicago and the Chicago Public School system. It is through these roots that we understand the importance of education and the impact of good role models. Also, as combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan we are intimately aware of the negative impact of violence on a community. Armed with this perspective, we hope to show CPS students that violence is a catastrophic way of dealing with difficult situations. By getting veterans involved in this project we want to continue to commit to ideals larger than ourselves and show our youth the values that they were taught in the military and honed in combat.
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This Project was made possible by:
