Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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20 UCW SEPTEMBER 9-15, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Winners will be announced at our 18th Annual Best of Fayetteville Awards Party being held at the new and improved on September 15 th September 16 th Best of Fayetteville Edition UP & COM I NG W EEKLY 'S Our world is losing too many young people to gun violence. Not a week goes by without an account of innocent young children and teens being shot and killed. Just recently, a 9-year old girl in Ferguson, Missouri, was shot and killed while doing her homework on her mother's bed. "Operation Ceasefire is a program to reduce gun and gang violence in Fayetteville and Cumberland County," said Lisa Jayne, Operation Ceasefire program coordinator. "We do three things with trying to reduce gun and gang violence, which are suppression, prevention and intervention." The movie nights are a part of the prevention aspect of the program. The upcoming movie nights are Saturday, September 19 at Pine Forest High School and Saturday, October 10 at Trinity United Methodist Church. "We started the movie nights back in 2007 and we would go into an area or neighborhood that had a lot of violence and pass out literature for crime prevention, which was costly," said Jayne. "We received a grant and bought our own movie night equipment." Jayne added that they go out about five times a year and have the community to come out, enjoy a newly-released movie and talk to the police officers. Crime literature and door prizes are given out at the movie nights. The other part of the prevention is their EKG Program which stands for educating kids about gun violence. "We started this program a year ago in the Cumberland County Schools," said Jayne. "It took us a year to develop the program and we hired a production company and made a 30-minute movie called Decision Points." Jayne added that she trains officers to go into 7th and 9th grade health classes and they teach the program to the students. The program is designed to make students think. The scenario of Decision Points entails a young male, Jamari, who is hanging out with the wrong kind of people and he has problems in school and with his parents. He encounters a bully at a party. He had encoun- tered him earlier at school. At the party, Jamari pulls out a weapon and shoots the bully. Jamari's sister was standing behind the bully so the bul- lets go through the bully and into his sister. His sister dies and the bully is paralyzed from his waist down. "It goes through the court system and Jamari gets sentenced with 2nd degree murder for his sister's death and an assault charge for the bully," said Jayne. "Jamari looks through the jail bars and states that he did not know what happened and that this was not supposed to be his life." The movie backs up and shows five different decisions that Jamari could have made differently that would have led to a different outcome. The Ceasefire movie nights have a much lighter tone and feature films that have been shown in theaters. They are family friendly and entertain- ing. All movie events begin at 7:30 p.m. and are outdoors. Bring your chair or blanket to enjoy a free movie under the stars. In the event of inclement weather, movie events will be held inside. For more informa- tion call Lisa Jayne at 433-1017. Operation Ceasefire Hosts Movie Night to Fight Crime By DR. SHANESSA FENER DR. SHANESSA FENNER, WT Brown Elementary School Principal, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200.