DEFY is Integral Part of District’s Project Safe Neighborhoods
DALLAS - The 20th Annual Drug Education for Youth (DEFY) Summer Camp was held last week at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base (NAS JRB) in Fort Worth, Texas, where members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas, members of the military and local law enforcement worked together to host the one-week residential camp for at-risk youth. Today’s announcement was made by U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham and Captain Jonathan R. Townsend of NAS JRB presented certificates to the 28 youth who attended this year’s DEFY summer camp at a graduation ceremony held Saturday morning, July 29, 2017, at NAS JRB. Camp attendees included at-risk youth from high crime and low income communities in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.
DEFY is a year-long, unique, comprehensive, and multi-phased program that reduces risk and strengthens protective factors that research has directly linked to adolescent alcohol and drug abuse, school failure, delinquency, and violence.
DEFY begins each year with the week-long, residential summer camp for selected at-risk youth, ages 10 - 11. At DEFY camp, the youth participate in a curriculum focused on healthy lifestyles to prevent drug abuse and gang involvement and resist negative peer pressure. To reinforce good practices learned at DEFY camp, DEFY continues throughout the year with classroom sessions, educational workshops and continued mentoring designed to provide the youth with additional life skills, training and tools to resist drugs and gangs.
The DEFY program is just another example of the partnerships that community groups and law enforcement undertake to build mutual trust and make our communities a safer place for all of us to live.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
