Chris Mohan was an innocent victim of a gang execution, and the event taking place at his former school Queen Elizabeth Secondary in Surrey marks the anniversary of his birth. The day-long event welcomes adults to its morning session with speakers that include Mohan’s mother Eileen, Surrey’s Mayor Dianne Watts, and Supt. Tom McCluskie, who heads the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit’s Gang Task Force. The afternoon session is geared towards youth and their interactive forum will feature peers who have navigated life’s challenges to become successful young adults.

Space is limited, but registration is free.

Eileen Mohan to speak at anti-gang forum, published by The Surrey Leader on May 16. Page A1/Front.

Mom of slain man speaks out against gang violence, published by The Surrey Now on May 17.

B.C. gang violence victims cited in awareness campaigns, published by 24 Hours on May 15.

Gang slaying victim Chris Mohan to be memorialized in gang violence forum, published by The Indo-Canadian Voice on May 12.

Anti-gang forum organized in memory of Surrey Six victim, published by News1130 on May 7.

Innocent gang violence victim Chris Mohan is being memorialized at an anti-gang forum on May 26.

(SURREY) An upcoming anti-gang forum is seeking to educate parents and empower youth in memory of innocent gang execution victim Chris Mohan.

The Chris Mohan Memorial Youth Forum will be an all-day event taking place at Queen Elizabeth Secondary School in Surrey on May 26, with a morning session geared toward parents and an afternoon session geared toward youth.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts will provide the opening remarks, and parents will hear from Eileen Mohan about the life and legacy of her son Chris, whose birth anniversary of May 31 is marked by the event. Then, the forum will begin, featuring Supt. Tom McCluskie, head of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit’s Gang Task Force; Kim Bolan, crime reporter for The Vancouver Sun; and Eileen Mohan. The forum will be streamed at vancouversun.com so that parents everywhere can watch and pose questions online.

“I want Christopher’s legacy to be looked on as, ‘This should never happen again. Innocent life should never be taken. You must always choose life before death,’” said Eileen Mohan.

“Through a horrible and very tragic situation, we have a group of people who have come together to empower youth and to show the community that when we put our minds together, good things will result.”

The youth forum will also be streamed online later that day. Youth will hear from peers who have navigated life’s challenges to become successful young adults in an interactive session aimed toward identifying character strengths.

“We know that early intervention is essential, so we need to engage youth and their parents about the warning signs and deadly consequences of gang activity,” said Mayor Watts. “This forum will help educate families and serve as an important legacy for Chris Mohan, an innocent victim of gang violence.”

The focus on promoting youth strengths as a means for gang and violence prevention reflects ongoing work by the forum’s host organization, the Acting Together SSHRC-CURA project at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

“This forum is a great opportunity for youth to talk to each other about the issues around youth violence in the community, and it gives parents an opportunity to share their views and concerns,” said Steve Dooley, a co-investigator at Acting Together.

“The event says that the community really does want to create opportunities for meaningful dialogue about the issues that are going on, and it’s a way to honour Chris Mohan and help other youth avoid getting into trouble in the spirit of his name.”

The forum is being hosted by Acting Together, with sponsor CIBC and partners TD Bank, City of Surrey, Surrey School District, The Vancouver Sun, Surrey RCMP, and Surrey Firefighters’ Charity.

To register, visit the parent registration page or the youth registration page, or call (604) 599-2961 before May 20. Registration is free, but space is limited.

Registration for Parents Forum
Registration for Youth Forum

Registration closes on May 20.

Sarah Jackson, web editor for Acting Together-CURA and Kwantlen journalism student, spent ten weeks interning for MSNBC in New York.

Around 11 a.m., an email from an MSNBC producer would go out to two dozen or so newsmakers with a “rundown,” a detailed plan for the nightly political news show Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Sarah Jackson, a student researcher with the Acting Together-Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) project and an undergraduate journalism student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, would get a glimpse of what her internship day would be like.

Sarah had already learned that people working in the happening city of New York rarely take lunch breaks. She would now be swept away in the adrenaline-driven hours at MSNBC, along with her supervisor Moshe Arenstein, the line producer for Hardball, and her colleagues.

Sarah’s role as an intern would propel her into action, frantically digging through background research and archives of stories, photos and video clips as plans for elements to accompany news stories took shape. By mid-afternoon, the show’s host and producers would dial in to a daily conference call to discuss the topics which would be broadcast live that very night at 5 p.m.

“The newsroom where stories are shaped is very impressive. There are huge TV monitors everywhere showing developing stories,” says Sarah.

She and her colleagues need to make sure that nothing gets missed in that evening’s Hardball broadcast. Using the top industry software, Sarah would add dates and sources to the video clips selected for the show and help make absolutely sure that there were no errors in any graphics, scripts, or codes containing video dates, sources and guests’ names.

By 5 p.m., Sarah would be in the show’s control room, a floor below the main studio. This is the time when everyone is at their professional best, ready to undertake any task.

Sarah too is on her toes now, running between the control room and various studios upstairs, and constantly talking to the guests through a microphone system while the show is airing live. When a guest is booked for a New York studio, she greets the guest at NBC Visitor’s Center, then takes him or her to the make-up room and to the studio while making sure the guest is comfortable and ready to go on air. The entire crew is also ready for any last minute happening in the world.

By 6 p.m., Sarah’s shift is supposed to end, though that is only if all goes well at MSNBC and in the world, of course. Once back in her small rented temporary place, she shifts gears and sits down to do homework for the other courses that she is taking at Kwantlen. But the United States’ election year has just begun, and occasionally the news cycle dictates her to stay in the control room until midnight.

At the end of the ten weeks of “chaotic” but the most unforgettable and the best experience of her life, as Sarah Jackson describes it, she was given a fond farewell by the Hardball team. She certainly appreciated the cupcakes brought in from the famous Magnolia Bakery around the corner of the MSNBC building!

Sarah is now back to school, and back to her not-so-typical undergraduate student life. She wears multiple hats. She is a full-time journalism student and is a freelance and vacation relief reporter. Her work has appeared in The Province, The Vancouver Sun, The Surrey Now, The Richmond News and The Coquitlam NOW, among other newspapers and websites. Sarah is the web developer, web editor and media lead for the Acting Together-CURA project at Kwantlen. She also compiles research on the media portrayal of youth violence and gangs for the project.

Sarah is multi-talented. Her expertise includes broadcast production assistance, news reporting, website development, pagination, writing, copy editing, video editing, research, graphic design and photography. In fact, she has already won eight student awards and has been on the Dean’s Honor Roll six times!

Importantly, Sarah has an admirably high level of inner strengths, the kind that the Acting Together CURA project has focused on. As such, she is a great role model for what our young men and women can achieve through their cognitive, social, and character strengths.

At her young age, she has already been very resourceful, as evident in how she landed this highly valued journalism internship with MSNBC, New York. Embodying the virtue of gratitude, a very important character strength identified in AT-CURA research, Sarah believes that it is always important to thank everyone for their help, no matter how trivial that help may be. As such, she always makes sure to follow up with the person with a thank you email.

After she received the prestigious “John Reiss Award in Journalism,” named after the executive producer of Hardball, she sent a thank you note to its funder Bob Basil, who is Kwantlen’s applied communications department chair. From that point on, Bob Basil became her mentor in many ways. With his encouragement, she later contacted John Reiss with a cover letter and a resume, and the rest is history. Sarah remains very grateful to Bob Basil for his mentorship.

When asked what she learned from her internship at MSNBC, Sarah was quick to respond: “Humility. I was so impressed by the way people in such high positions were kind and respectful to everyone, even to people in unimportant positions like me. Everyone worked together as a team. I walked away realizing that if such powerful people don’t act like they are more important than others, why would I?”

When asked what message she would have for young people like herself, Sarah says that they must believe in themselves.

“It was hard work, but also a dream come true, and I’m sure other students could achieve the same with the right focus and determination,” contends Sarah, adding that gratitude and humility must always remain part of one’s pursuit of success.

The AT-CURA team is very proud of Sarah Jackson.

Related: The Surrey North Delta Leader published “From Kwantlen to New York”

The project’s funder The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) has taken note, choosing to highlight the project in its 2010-11 annual report (page 9) and on its website.

In both, Sergeant Shinder Kirk, of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit – Gang Task Force, relates the value he sees in the Acting Together SSHRC-CURA project.

“This research gives us the academic foundation we need to build our prevention, intervention and enforcement strategies. This is the future of law enforcement when it comes to gangs and gang violence,” said Sgt. Kirk.

To read SSHRC’s story “Research partnership takes unique approach to reducing youth gang violence”, click here.

Members of the Acting Together SSHRC-CURA team met with NDP public safety critic and Surrey North MP Jasbir Sandhu (second from right) on Mar. 16.

The Acting Together SSHRC-CURA team recently welcomed a special visitor to its CURA Centre at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

NDP public safety critic and Surrey North MP Jasbir Sandhu visited the office on Mar. 16 to greet the team and learn more about AT-CURA’s gang prevention project, after staff had extended an invitation during a recent event.

Sandhu was attentive and genuinely concerned about the youth violence and youth gang involvement issues that AT-CURA is working to reduce through its research and community collaboration, said Dr. Gira Bhatt, the project’s principal investigator and project director.

“He said, ‘I’m not here as a politician but as a community member, and I just want to share the kind of work you’re doing,’” said Bhatt.

At the meeting, a small group of AT-CURA academic partners, community partners and student researchers described the project’s goals and ongoing efforts to Sandhu. He voiced his support for the work being done, providing the team with several suggestions and inviting the students out to visit his office, too.

“I said to him, ‘Your plate must be so full, but we seek your input and support on how best to help community partners start programs that will help end the issue of youth violence in our city,” said Bhatt. “But even before I finished what I was saying, he said, ‘Acting Together will always have my attention.’”

Sandhu, too, had kind words about the meeting, after returning to work later that day.

He posted on Facebook: “Today I met with the team who are behind Acting Together – SSHRC-CURA. This collaborative initiative engages students, academics and community groups and is interacting with our community, our youth to make a positive change. I suggest you “Like” them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter @actingtogether or engage with their community events in Surrey.”

The team is very grateful to Mr. Sandhu for his visit and support for the project.

Acting Together will be featured in Kwantlen's upcoming Celebration of Research on April 5.

One of Surrey’s leading gang prevention initiatives, Acting Together, will be featured in an upcoming Kwantlen Polytechnic University event aiming to spread the word about the exciting research being done at the school.

The Celebration of Research will open with a keynote address from the Acting Together SSHRC-CURA (AT-CURA) project’s director and principal investigator Dr. Gira Bhatt.

The presentation will give an overview of the project’s greatest achievements so far, its research methods and its ongoing work with community partners to help shape policies and programs related to youth violence prevention.

“This will be a great opportunity for one and all to share in the good work that is being done through the Acting Together project to address the issue of protecting our youth from gang involvement,” said Bhatt.

“I sure hope we will have a packed house to celebrate the collaborative spirit that has made it all possible.”

Following the presentation, the AT-CURA team will be on-site to answer questions and share more information about its research and work in the community. Meanwhile, the day-long celebration will continue on, showcasing the other impressive research being done at the school.

The Celebration of Research is open to all – from students and faculty to researchers and interested community members – and networking is encouraged.

Bhatt’s speech begins at 9 a.m. on Thursday, April 5, in the Surrey Campus Conference Centre. The presentation is, of course, a collaborative effort made possible by the work of AT-CURA co-investigators Dr. Roger Tweed, Steve Dooley and Dr. Nathalie Gagnon, as well as that of many other academic partners, staff members, student researchers, community partners and community members.

Click here to view the schedule of events.

Prahst, an AT-CURA co-investigator, shared some of her discoveries in a talk entitled “Seduced into Gangs: Youth and Alienation” at Langara College on Jan. 18.

Her presentation explored the causes for violence and joining gangs, and the role youth alienation plays in these issues. It was based on her work for one of AT-CURA’s qualitative studies which are intended to help shape future youth violence prevention efforts in B.C.

Prahst is also the chair for the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Langara College.