{"id":35345,"date":"2025-11-15T23:43:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T23:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/35345\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T23:43:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T23:43:24","slug":"tackling-youth-gun-violence-nonprofits-unite-to-spark-change-in-berks-county-reading-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/35345\/","title":{"rendered":"Tackling youth gun violence: Nonprofits unite to spark change in Berks County | Reading Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tackling the problem of youth and gun violence is huge undertaking, but that is just what one nonprofit in Berks County is doing, but they&#8217;re not doing it alone.<\/p>\n<p>Youth gun violence is a heavy topic with many layers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There has to be the hard conversations. If we don&#8217;t talk about it, to find solutions, it&#8217;s going to continue,&#8221; said Pam Gockley, Founder and Executive Director of The Camel Project.<\/p>\n<p>Finding solutions is what The Camel Project of Berks County is focused on doing. But they know they can&#8217;t do it alone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If we push ourselves to be uncomfortable, we learn, we grow, we hear unique experiences. I&#8217;ve heard from people today that our grassroots nonprofits that are out there in the street. It&#8217;s working with kids trying to help them,&#8221; said Nick Hill, Bethany Children&#8217;s Home Deputy CEO.<\/p>\n<p>Three nonprofits: The Camel Project, Bethany Children&#8217;s Home and Green Building Alliance met Saturday morning at GoggleWorks for &#8220;Power of Unity: Accountability to Our Community,&#8221; for a forum.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We had a very hard conversation about hard topics like: racism, systemic institutional racism,&#8221; said Gockley. &#8220;We talked about bullying.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But, they know they need to expand that conversation in order for change.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Every elected official was invited to this event,&#8221; said Gockley. &#8220;Every nonprofit, large and small were invited in.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Camel Project hopes more forums like this continue and the momentum snowballs.<\/p>\n<p>Gockley said, &#8220;As a group, we are so much more powerful and that&#8217;s why we called it &#8211; power and unity.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tackling the problem of youth and gun violence is huge undertaking, but that is just what one nonprofit&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[214,128,130,129,213],"class_list":["post-35345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}