One night the pastor found a young man shot dead on the doorstep. The community asked themselves if they were responsible. They agreed at some level they were. To try to understand what had happened, the pastor went and spoke to everyone around. And one young woman told him how it was: "See, the critical time for young people round here is 4pm till midnight. And in that time, dealers and pimps and gangs are there - and you're not."
My point is not about faith, nor America. It's about targeted support and the pursuit of hard outcomes. And, in fact, it's not so much a point as a question. Is support for specific interventions in the lives of particular groups of young people crowding out generic work with no hard outcome in mind? Are we, without really meaning to, walking away from work that is "only" there to build resilience, raise imaginative horizons and provide an alternative culture to crime and violence?
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