Brandon Duncan, Wrightstown
As a child advocate and gang intervention specialist for Fierce Youth Outreach, I feel an obligation to write to the community of Lawrenceville and share how my first visit to your community resulted in me visiting churches that were all locked up tight and how just a block from one of the bigger, more beautiful church buildings, I found a little blue baggy. Blue baggy commonly found on streets in inner cities like Trenton or Camden.
First I should tell you how I know abut these kinds of things and what care I have. I am blessed to be an ordained minister and the founder of a Bible believing youth outreach ministry. FYO, we specialize in gang intervention, prevention and diversion and work with at risk youth, families and communities.
My wife and I recently moved to the Central Jersey area to be closer to family and for ministry purposes. Because we are a self-supporting ministry we work to earn and fund ministry visions and goals and what brought us to Lawrenceville was work. Our ministry involves visiting group homes, schools, churches, youth events and revivals, working with other child advocates and community leaders in efforts to reach out to at risk youth, families and communities. At risk to us is any one involved, affected by or impacted by (not limited to) gang and criminal lifestyles, abuse, neglect, homelessness to those forced into occult or witchcraft or even bullying.
We have been blessed to visit cities from the Midwest such as Rockford, Illinois, and Beloit, Wisconsin, to the south Knoxville, TN, and now northeast cities like New York to Leonardo. Heroin addiction is in the news daily it seems and in cities like Trenton and Camden to Rockford it is common to find on the streets little baggies that drugs are sold and distributed in.
My wife and I are involved in outreach ministry with plans of working in inner cities near and close to Lawrenceville but truthfully we certainly didn’t expect to find baggies on the sidewalks here and to see and find all of the church doors locked.In the university library today, March 19, I read two newspapers thus far and in the Star Ledger front page is a big article about task force new weapons in drug war. Then in the Lawrence Ledger in Capital News & Comments is an article about Heroin laws.
This compels me to write this letter to you and ask you all, are you truly aware of how seriously vital it is for us to reach out to our youth who are at risk and to educate our communities about issues such as gang and criminal lifestyles and addictions?
My wife and I have been visiting organizations and professional child advocates and have found that outreach to at risk youth is not really a priority. We pray that possibly we just have contacted the wrong hundreds of people and so we keep doing what we are called to do and we are here to say, every child matters to Jesus and to us and we are in service and available for consultation or consideration for partnering with you in efforts to either educate some of our child advocates in the community or reach some of the youth who are heading down the wrong path.
From 2007 to 2009 more than 250,000 joined gangs in the U.S. and those statistics were found online, you can believe and trust that these numbers are growing rapidly. More than 2 million people are incarcerated in America and those institutions holding all of them people are training centers for some the most deadly gangs in the U.S. Jail and prison gangs are reaching from their cells into our streets and destroying families and communities.
We love our law enforcement officials and we cannot blame them or expect them to do all of the work, we as a community and body of Christ must make it a priority to reach out to those at risk and share hope, help and love.I trust this letter will make it to the public and we can be reached at the following [email protected] or you can visit our ministry fan page on facebook at www.facebook.com/fierceyouthoutreach or call us (779)771-0372.
Brandon Duncan
Wrightstown

