WINNIPEG'S WEST END: DRUG WARS CATCH INNER-CITY KIDS IN THE CROSSFIRE

Vancouver's not the only city fighting street crime. We can learn
from other Canadian cities:

Winnipeg's West End is a modern-day Wild West. The inner-city area's
struggled with drugs and gangs, while the city itself is the murder
and gang capital of Canada, with the highest per-capita homicide rate
(nearly five per 100,000) of nine major cities, 2004 Statistics
Canada data shows.

In October 2005, a tragic death shocked citizens into demanding
change. A 17-year-old bystander was caught in a shoot-out between the
Mad Cowz and African Mafia gangs fighting for crack territory. In
response, police launched Operation Clean Sweep and from November
2005 to March 2006, made 658 arrests, seized 68 weapons and mounds of
drugs. The effort got the University of Winnipeg thinking.

"If your university's in an inner-city that has gangs, kids dropping
out and single parents, you'd better darn well embrace that
neighbourhood and try to make it a better place," says former mayor
and U of W Foundation president Susan Thompson.

So they opened the Wii Chiiwaakanak Learning Centre near campus to
help kids with homework clubs, arts, sports camps, native crafts,
elders circles and ESL, with university students as mentors. Hundreds
of kids have discovered the centre, and themselves.

"If those kids see an aboriginal university student or another
inner-city university student," says the university's Jennifer
Rattray, "they begin to believe that they can do it too, what seems
so impossible."