Monday, June 27, 2011

Local Somali-Canadian community plan to help at-risk youth

Leaders within Edmonton’s Somali-Canadian community are vowing to help at-risk youths to stop a deadly trend involving its own members.

Ahmed Hussen, head of the Canadian Somali Congress, said community leaders at a town hall meeting Saturday hammered out a plan that will include mentoring at-risk youth to clamp down on the slaying of its own members.

Hussen also said members within Edmonton’s Somali-Canadian community will be encouraged to become foster parents for those troubled teenagers.

“Talented” teens within the community will be encouraged to pursue a career in the Edmonton Police Service, added Hussen.

“We have to create a safer community and a safer Edmonton,” said Hussen. “We want to destroy an unfair message that exists out there in the public that says the Canadian-Somali community is not working with the public, or the police.”

Mahamad Accord, president of the Alberta Somali Community Centre, told the police commission earlier this month that the police should hire more people from within the community to deal with the slayings.

He also urged the commission to force homicide Det. Bill Clark to publicly apologize for controversial remarks he made about the city’s first homicide of the year on New Year’s Eve.

Hussen said plans are also in the works by leaders within the Canadian-Somali community to create a poster campaign to urge members to report crimes to police when it happens.

“We need to be more involved in the community,” said Hussen. “We are an integral part of this city.”

A total of 13 Somali-Canadians have been slain in Alberta’s capital city since 2006.

Edmonton’s Somali-Community remains on edge as the hunt continues to find a gunman responsible for the most recent Somali slaying on June 3 of 43-year-old Abdi Ali Mohamud, who police said was shot over a case of mistaken identity. Investigators are still looking for the shooter’s intended target.

“We are not dropping the ball on this issue,” said Hussen. “We all always trying to follow up with the police and the city government. We are not stopping.”

jeff.cummings@sunmedia.ca

Follow me on Twitter: @SUNJeffCummings

Source: The Edmonton Sun

1 comment:

  1. Knowing that a local community from Canada is doing all these things is very inspiring. If they can help at-risk youths; then any other local community can do their part in helping at-risk youths.

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