National Safe Place Week is March 15-21, 2009. Bringing awareness to young people in need of crisis intervention.

Until our streets are safe…
Until families can understand each other…
Until drugs and violence disappear…
Until no young person needs to run away or feel afraid…
There must be Safe Place.

Safe Place is a national youth outreach program that educates thousands of young people every year about the dangers of running away or trying to resolve difficult, threatening situations on their own. This easily replicated community initiative involves the whole community to provide safe havens and resources for youth in crisis.

Safe Place creates a network of “Safe Place locations” – youth friendly businesses, schools, fire stations, libraries, YMCAs and other appropriate public buildings that display the distinctive yellow and black Safe Place sign. In many communities the local transit system takes part, designating buses as mobile Safe Place sites.

These Safe Place sites extend the doors of the youth emergency shelter or youth service agency throughout the community. Youth are easily able to access immediate help wherever they are.

Most Safe Place agencies reach out to youth between the ages of 12 to 17 years old. Some agencies serve younger youth.

I don’t often get story leads from my youngest sister, but I have to credit her and her involvement with Safe Place (in Gwinnett County, Georgia) for learning about National Safe Place Week.  For example, in Gwinnett County, you can go to any QT gas station in a crisis and get help.  QT personnel are trained on how to respond to a young person in need of Safe Place services.

If you are a young person in need of help or ever know someone who needs to get out of their living situation right away, please read this and find out what services are available in your area.  If there aren’t any Safe Place sites, then maybe you can take the lead in trying to bring the Safe Place program to your community.  (click the link below)

HOW TO START A SAFE PLACE IN YOUR COMMUNITY

Also, if you’re in a town that does not have Safe Place, an alternative is to utilize the National Runaway Switchboard (NRS).  NRS offers:

• Crisis intervention.
  
• Referrals to community based shelters, agencies and support services.
  
• Conference calls between youth and their families or youth and resource agencies.
  
• Transportation authorization for runaway youth returning home through Greyhound’s HOME FREE program.

If you need immediate assistance, call the NRS

1-800-RUNAWAY or visit http://www.1800runaway.org/

States in yellow below have Safe Place programs.  Just because your state has a Safe Place program does not automatically mean that there is one in your town.  Please visit http://nationalsafeplace.org/aboutus/about-where.php for more details

For more info…

The information here was extracted from the National Safe Place website 

http://nationalsafeplace.org/

I also found a Myspace page

http://www.myspace.com/nationalsafeplace

From Southwest Airlines blog

http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blog/national-safe-place

Have you ever heard of this program?

Do you have any Safe Place success stories to share?

Do you have any additional Safe Place resources to share?