BURBANK : Businesses Sought for Effort to Help Youths

A group of Burbank businesses is forming a coalition to help police give youths alternatives to drugs and gangs.

“I feel I owe something back to the community,” said Bruce Ferguson, an account executive for a Burbank advertising agency who is trying to put together the Alliance of Business Community.

Ferguson saw firsthand the effects of drug abuse during his years driving an ambulance in Covina.

The coalition’s aim is to work with the Police Department’s anti-drug program, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), to give kids role models, donations to pay for special programs, or maybe even some work or volunteer experience.

Police hope that the new coalition will give kids the support they need to make it in the world.

“There is a need out there,” said Sgt. Bob Brode of the Police Department’s juvenile division. “It is incredible.”

Under the program, police officers visit school campuses to tell students how to say no to drugs, as well as a variety of ways to say it that help them resist peer pressure and retain their self-esteem.

At-risk youths--those on the edge of joining gangs or participating in criminal activity--are often referred to Burbank’s Outreach Center, but Brode worries that Burbank does not do enough to help the others.

“What about the vast untapped groups that aren’t in trouble with the law?” Brode asks. “What about those kids who don’t want to belong to gangs?”

Fund raising will be the primary work of the coalition. But Ferguson said he hopes that the project will go beyond that, with business leaders helping youths in one-on-one relationships.

The group also would support the DARE program by providing speakers and role models and financially helping youths join in activities that they would not have been able to afford.

For example, Brode is the deputy commander for the Burbank Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary to the U. S. Air Force that gets youths involved in aviation and teaches them about leadership.

The program is great for kids because it gets them interested in something other than gangs, Brode said. But many of those who would join don’t because they can’t afford the membership fees, uniforms and other expenses, he said.

The new business coalition should be able to get kids into the Civil Air Patrol or similar organizations, Brode said.

“There’s a lot of kids who don’t want to be involved in gangs,” Brode said. “They want to go somewhere in their lives.”

A meeting for business people interested in helping the coalition is scheduled for April 20 at 4 p.m. at the Burbank police station.