Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities (YES) is an interdisciplinary community change project developed by The Flint Youth Violence Prevention (YVPC) academic-community partnership. Empowerment theory, positive youth development, and ecological theory guided the project development, evaluation, and plans for sustaining the work after the funding period ends. The goals of the project are to provide youth with opportunities for meaningful involvement in preventing youth violence and creating community change, enhance neighborhood organizations' ability to engage youth in their activities, and change the social and physical environment to reduce and prevent violence (especially youth violence). The project involw_s youth in the process of changing community physical and social environments and includes three components: 1) youth empowerment activities; 2) neighborhood organization development; and 3) community development projects that inv61ve youth and organizations working together. Youth empowerment activities include workshops for program planning, budgeting, implementation, and evaluation; opportunities to engage their peers in community change efforts; developing ethnic identity and pride; and working with adults to achieve these goals. Neighborhood organization development includes assisting them with creation of positive youth development settings, and workshops to enhance staff skills for working with youth. Community development projects include community gardening and beautification; land use and parks development; and community celebration events. Participating youth and neighborhood organizations will develop, proposals for these projects that require a focus on community level change. The evaluation ificludes a quasi-experimental pre-posttest comparison group design and analysis of multiple outcomes across levels of analysis. We will assess change in community norms, fear, social cohesion and social capital using an existing community survey in the two neighborhoods. Assessment of changes in youths' violent attitudes, norms, and behavior; ethnic identity and pride; and mental health will also be done for the evaluation. We will also compare the intervention and comparison neighborhoods on several community level measures including police incident data, hospital injury reports (e-codes), school suspension data, We will also conduct process evaluation to insure the fidelity of the iLntervention and to adapt tlhe project when issues arise. Several participating organizations have agreed to help sustain and disseminate the program if it is found to be effective.
| Zimmerman, Marc A; Stewart, Sarah E; Morrel-Samuels, Susan et al. (2011) Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities: combining theory and practice in a community-level violence prevention curriculum. Health Promot Pract 12:425-39 |
| Reischl, Thomas M; Zimmerman, Marc A; Morrel-Samuels, Susan et al. (2011) Youth empowerment solutions for violence prevention. Adolesc Med State Art Rev 22:581-600, xiii |
