William Stephens, Regional Re-Entry Specialist -Department of Juvenile Justice, Elizabeth Charity, CEO and Founder Youth Outreach Services and Michael Dawkins, George Mason University Social Entrepreneurship Society President

This is the result of the Healing our Community Forum. Everyone who came was all on one accord; providing a formula to help develop and implement more educational and employment opportunities instead of giving incarceration to  our youth and young adults. We had representatives in the following areas;  businesses, county and state agencies, community leaders, politicians and educators.  – Youth Outreach Services is partnering with George Mason University Social Entrepreneurship Society, Job Corps, Target, and the State Department of  Juvenile Justice  to help reduce recidivism. The college students  will help implement  a 12 week job  readiness mentoring program, they will do surveys,  research data  and give the results  to  policymakers; hoping that the state will  use the information gathered  to provide more funding toward education, employment, and rehabilitation instead of incarceration.  We will have another Healing Our Community Forum as a follow-up to share the results of the student’s  research in April, 2015 at George Mason University on the Prince William Campus.