The Youth Peace Project was founded by the UCLA Chapter of Gamma Zeta Alpha and U-Can International & Associates Inc. Our mission is to educate, engage, and empower youth (and their communities) to promote non-violence. Increased access to guns and frequent exposure to violence impacts youth in very detrimental ways. Even so, the access to substantive resources that can help alleviate these damages are scarce, if existent at all. In an effort to fill this void our objective is to initiate a serious of events that will prepare youth and their communities to gain the tools needed to stop cycles of violence and create cycles through collective peace-building.
Youth Peace Conference: Hosted bi-annually, the Youth Peace Conference is intended to educate and engage youth about leadership, higher education, conflict resolution, community organizing and civic responsibility. These skills are critical to address the issues that many of our city's youth must face from day to day.
Annual Symposium: The Annual Gang Symposium started on May 15th, 2007. Titled "Social Welfare and Gangs" this panel series has enabled the UCLA community to engage with an issue that constantly hits newspaper headlines, yet is hardly discussed on campus. Year to Year we have organized gang intervention workers, policy makers, community organizations, researchers and faith-based leaders. We firmly believe that engaging these multiple entities is important to forming the collaborative partnerships needed to take on pressing social issues such as youth violence, educational inequality, poverty etc.