CERG received an initial grant from the Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation to launch the Alphabet City Community Resource Project. In cooperation with an artist educator and a local school, CERG worked with elementary school children in developing a multimedia "Map" of their neighborhood. This electronic map will have interactive layers that focus on various neighborhood resources and characteristics, such as "memories of the elderly", "history of the neighborhood", "transportation", and "natural resources and gardens". As the map develops, it will be used as a resource guide by other children and community members. To achieve this, CERG will cooperate with the Lower East Side Tenement Museum located in the neighborhood. In the initial phase of the project, children did drawings and wrote stories about the street trees on their blocks. Digitized versions of these pictures and drawings constitute the first step of a visual database that will grow as more and more topics are explored by the children in the school.

Two CERG members, Kim Sabo and Selim Iltus, delivered the key note speech at the Youth Vision Jeunesse, youth drug abuse prevention forum in Banff, Alberta, Canada held from April 14-18, 1998. The presentation was a result of a year long research project funded by UNDCP, CCSA, CCLAT and AADAC that involved young people from 33 drug prevention programs around the world. Participatory evaluation instruments were designed and pilot tested in Bolivia by Kim and Selim. These instruments were then sent to programs and filled out by young people in workshop settings. The purpose of these workshops was to develop young people's thinking about drug issues and have them evaluate their programs as a preparation for the youth forum.

The results from these workshops were also summarized in the form of two handbooks. These handbooks also served as organizing tools for young people to log their ideas and recommendations throughout the event. These recommendations were presented to the Executive Director of the United Nations International Drug Control Program and delivered by youth at the Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.