The Original TenPoint Coalition • Established 1992

Boston Ten Point Coalition
215 Forest Hills Street
Boston, MA 02130
Phone: 617.524.4331
Fax: 617.524.4962

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History

In 1992, the rampant youth violence spreading through Boston erupted at the funeral of a young gun shot victim. A gang-related shooting and stabbing spilled into Morning Star Baptist Church turning the funeral service into a battleground.

Clergy and lay leaders responded by mobilizing the Greater Boston community to make violence an unacceptable method of resolving problems. Their collective effort produced the intial Ten Point Plan, stated below, to positively redirect the lives of Black and Latino youth, especially those at high risk for violence, drug abuse, and other destructive behaviors.

The Boston TenPoint Coalition was born.

The Ten Point Plan has since been revised to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The Ten Point Plan — 1992

The Ten Point Plan calls upon churches and faith-based agencies of Boston to work collaboratively to develop the following action plan aimed at reducing violence and helping youth to develop more positive and productive life-styles:

  1. Adopting youth gangs.
  2. Sending mediators and mentors for Black and Latino juveniles into the local courts, schools, juvenile detention facilities, and the streets.
  3. Commissioning youth workers to do street level work with drug dealers and gang leaders.
  4. Developing concrete and specific economic alternatives to the drug economy.
  5. Building linkages between downtown and suburban churches, and inner-city churches and ministries.
  6. Initiating and supporting neighborhood crime watches.
  7. Developing partnerships between churches and community health centers that would, for example, facilitate counseling for families and individuals under stress, offer abstinence-oriented prevention programs for sexually transmitted diseases, or provide substance abuse prevention and recovery programs.
  8. Establishing brotherhoods and sisterhoods as a rational alternative to violent gang life.
  9. Establishing rape crisis drop-in centers, services for battered women, and counseling for abusive men.
  10. Developing a Black and Latino curriculum with an additional focus on the struggles of women and poor people as a means of increasing literacy and enhancing self-esteem in young people.

Reshape Lives • Rebuild Community