The Caribbean Child Development Centre (CCDC) at the Open Campus, The UWI in partnership with the Childhood and Youth Research Institute at the Anglia Ruskin University in England, will present a special public lecture entitled, “Children’s Rights, Gang Culture and Citizenship: Empowerment and Inclusion Towards Reducing Youth Gang Culture”. The public lecture takes place on Thursday, November 29, 2012 beginning at 3:30 p.m. at Undercroft, UWI, Mona. 
 
Guest speakers will be the visiting Research Fellow from Anglia Ruskin University, Dr. Darren Sharpe and Mr. Horace Levy of the Peace Management Initiative in Jamaica. Dr. Sharpe’s topic will be “Children and Young People's Citizenship: Who's in and Who's out of British democracy." Mr. Levy‘s topic will cover “Youth Violence and Organized Crime: Causes and Counter-measures Project.” The panel will also include presentations by youth programme representatives. 
 
Dr. Darren Sharpe is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Childhood and Youth Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge. His specialisations include the involvement of children, young people and vulnerable adults in policy research. He brings a high level of knowledge and understanding of youth policy and the evaluation of prevention, targeted and universal services aimed at disaffected youth. He led the young person strand of the feasibility study to evaluate the “Aiming High Ten Year Strategy” on behalf of Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and has advised and undertaken work for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, British Council and European Commission. He is the author of several publications on children and youth. 
 
Mr. Horace Levy is a member of the Peace Management Initiative in Jamaica, a community outreach programme, which over the past ten years, worked to head off and defuse community violence. He was lately a research fellow in the Institute of Criminal Justice and Security at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. He is the author of the 2009 monograph, Killing Streets and Community Revival.