Safe & Sound’s New Web Presence Offers A New Resource for Mobilizing our City to Reduce Crime
The newly redesigned Safe & Sound website officially launches today, March 19, 2009.
Safe & Sound is Milwaukee’s only non-profit crime reduction strategy working in 21 high -crime neighborhoods and mobilizing the resources of residents, block watches, youth and youth-serving organizations, the Milwaukee Police Department and District Attorney’s Community Prosecution Unit, businesses, churches, elected officials, and city services such as the Department of Neighborhood Services. Our goal is to create neighborhoods that are safe places to raise families and operate businesses.
The website is a new outreach and organizing tool for our work with youth, block club leaders and other residents.
Each Safe & Sound target neighborhood has its own page with news stories and photographs depicting projects and events organized by youth, residents and Safe & Sound staff. Each also has information about community leaders for that neighborhood.
The site will grow over time and offers the potential for generating a participatory culture of youth, residents and community leaders interested in being involved in a significant way in fighting crime and promoting safety in their neighborhoods.
The Safe & Sound website helps provide access to the relationships and resources that individuals and groups in low-income communities need to undertake their own crime prevention efforts. It is a place for accessing compelling youth and crime information, and creating dynamic, powerful and informative community-generated content that inspires a call for action. All too often, the inspiring stories of success mobilizing communities are drowned out by the tragic incidents that plague our community and are not truly representative of the City as a whole. Stories of success in these neighborhoods can be long and complex, with ups and downs along the way. The real fruits of our labor may not been seen or recognized by the broad group of caring adults, committed youth-serving organizations, law enforcement, elected officials, faith-based and businesses groups that support these efforts.
One such success story is apparent in the actual design and development of the Safe & Sound website. Through a proposal process Safe & Sound chose Tech By Design, a web services provider with the same appreciation and understanding of the challenges our young people face, as well as the commitment to make a difference. Tech By Design was formed by Dave Harroun and other former members of HomeBoyz Interactive, an innovative non-profit begun in 1999 to help Milwaukee youth learn marketable skills and how to make better decisions. Many of the HomeBoyz youth were recruited through Safe Places such as the Latino Community Center. Moreover, the Community Partners’ Program referred youth off the street, while other referrals came straight from the District Attorney’s Office.
One of the former “HomeBoyz”, Jeremy Summers, was the lead technician on the Safe & Sound website and is a great example of how individuals have benefitted from programming that targets neighborhoods and youth at the time when they need it the most. Jeremy states, “What I needed was someone that could give me a little encouragement. Back then I can’t honestly say I ever thought I would be here at Tech By Design with a great job in web development. I can’t say how much Dave Harroun and the others have helped get me here.”
Safe & Sound received an AT&T Excelerator grant that made this possible. AT&T Excelerator was a key component of AT&T AccessAll, a major initiative to bring technology to underserved communities.
Barbara Notestein, Safe & Sound Executive Director
Safe & Sound, Inc.
801 W. Michigan St.
Milwaukee, WI 53233
bnotestein@milwaukeehidta.org
(414) 220-4799
safesound.org
Dave Harroun, Owner
Tech By Design
dharroun@techbydeisgn.com
(414) 431-0800
techbydesign.com
