WESTERN HILLS PRESS
Your Community Press newspaper serving Addyston, Bridgetown, Cheviot, Cleves, Covedale, Dent, Green Township, Mack, Miami Township, North Bend, Westwood
WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2016
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BECAUSE COMMUNITY MATTERS
Westwood residents aiming to stop crime Kurt Backscheider kbackscheider@communitypress.com
PHOTOS THANKS TO CATHERINE LANZILLOTTA
Delhi Township resident David Wandstrat poses with children in Ghana. Wandstrat is a member of the International Mission for Children, which is raising money to build a school.
West Siders helping to build a school in Ghana
WESTWOOD – A group of Westwood residents have been working for the past several months to address violent crime in the neighborhood and now they’re ready to share with the what they’ve community learned, solutions they’ve identified and how residents can get involved in the effort. Westwood Uniting to Stop the Violence, an initiative of the Westwood Civic Association in partnership with the Community Police Partnering Center, hosted a community meeting July 23 to provide an update on violent crime and discuss specific actions the group recommends for reducing crime. Mary Jenkins, president of the civic association and a coconvener of Westwood Uniting to Stop the Violence, said last summer more than a dozen Westwood residents attended a citywide forum at the Urban League about problem solving to curb violence.
Kurt Backscheider kbackscheider@communitypress.com
T
he last place David Wandstrat ever expected to find himself was 5,000 miles away from home, in a village in southern Ghana. Yet, there he was. A truck driver from Delhi Township doing God’s work with three people he barely knew. “I didn’t want to be part of an overseas mission,” he said. “I was always a true isolationist. I was always the one to say, ‘Let’s keep our money, time and talent right here in our own neighborhoods.’” But then Wandstrat, a member of the St. Dominic-Delhi council of the Knights of Columbus, met the Rev. John Amankwah, a Cincinnati Archdiocesan priest and associate professor of communication and new media studies at Mount St. Joseph University who was born in Ghana. who also Amankwah, serves as an associate at St. Ignatius Loyola parish in Monfort Heights and will soon be
West Price Hill resident Catherine Lanzillotta snaps a selfie with a young girl in Ghana. Lanzillotta is a member of the International Mission for Children, a foundation raising money to build a school in the village of Kwapia in Ghana.
the parochial vicar of both St. Teresa of Avila and St. William parishes in Price Hill, is the founder of the International Mission for Children. The foundation has partnered with three area Knights of Columbus councils to build a school for children in Amankwah’s hometown of Kwapia in Gha-
na. The idea for the foundation came about in 2014 after Amankwah made a trip home and found that economic growth hadn’t translated into equal opportunities for both the country’s expanding urban
IT’S ABOUT TIME ...
See GHANA, Page 6A
See CRIME, Page 2A
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“We decided to take that on deliberately, in a citizen-directed approach and in partnership with the police and local organizations,” she said. The group launched with a community meeting last November, which was attended by 150 area residents. She said they heard about violent crime in Westwood, learned about a problem-solving model to respond effectively and pinpointed their top concerns. Residents identified many problem locations and behaviors, concentrating on the conditions that lead to or are associated with violent crime, she said. The three locations the group selected for attention were noted over and over by attendees at the November meeting – the intersections of Harrison and McHenry avenues, Harrison and Boudinot avenues and Harrison Avenue and Fischer Place. “Those form a corridor and are linked to other streets and
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Vol. 88 No. 37 © 2016 The Community Press ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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