welcome to another episode of giving back tonight's episode is going to cover the topic of violence in the community we're very excited to have our guests with us today from girls incorporated next to him is court me a drama from girls incorporated and at the end is james small my co host we'd like to start off with a quick introduction to the booking process in alameda county juvenile hall once we go through that process then we will continue on with the topic of violence in the community how you doing today jose jose how do you feel about the violence  the topic is going to be violent in the community we're very excited today to have to community based agencies with this girl's incorporated and the american boys club to my left we have  very big issue in our community mainly because most of the young people you know they're starting little things are starting to take them off now like it's kind of like a form of people not respecting them like if you step on one in their shoes or you step on someone's shoes they're good and they will probably very good and ready to fight you over that does as well the young people were  a shoe the other guy stood of had his fist border ready to knock this dude out for stepping on issue because he found that as a form of disrespect so that's a major issue in our community because kids are taking things way too seriously now thank you for our guests as well have you seen changes recently in the last few years as compared in the past with violence in the community eighty five and there were certain if if there are such thing as rules to the gang and older people who ran the game kind of kept everything under control kind of made sure things fall of a certain pattern again if there is such a thing and that in that type of lifestyle and as time went on individuals either got killed went to the penitentiary or lost their status as so called shot callers the younger people started growing up without any guidance without any rules without somebody showing them how to do things how to keep it on under how not to let little things trip and then there's also societal issues and family issues that also poured into this mixture so as i look at things now things happen without really a rhyme or reason and most of it comes from just not having the skill sets to cope with certain things so rather then talk it out to find out what's going on or take it to somebody who will go find out what's going on and then kind of get some feedback on how to handle the situation the young people nowadays or even gauging that situation head on would violence farce and that the thinking is that if i don't respond that way then i'm considered to be weak a mark of buster and that will open up the doors for me to become a victim and i don't want to become a victim out here in the streets and what about for you dominic working with the younger kids in elementary school are you seeing things happening sooner on a bigger level definitely on a lot of the services that we provide our afterschool services and they're particularly i'm successful because the parents are coming to us saying that times have changed and they need a safe place for their kids to go after school as well as there was a recent shooting on eighty second in my cart there that a lot of our young people's families were involved in and providing them a safe haven to go to is what our programs are for but also as a place to vent and we also provide mental health services to our clientele as well which is also very useful for their emotional development help them in the future and on the high school level courtney i think after school programming frightful girls high school youth in general is really important because then they do have that place that they feel is safe and they do have a place where they can get these leadership skills and take in the community and show their peers that there are other ways to deal with issues and it doesn't have to necessarily be a violent way to deal with these things i think one of the major factors that occurred ten fifteen and twenty years ago is that so much funding was cut to community based agencies that all of these afterschool programs and sports programs and leadership programs were drastically cut so you ended up with a lot of youth where nowhere to go and a lot of idle time so one of the things we'd like to focus on now is we've also did in alameda county juvenile hall some tapes of youth audiotapes answering the question how do you feel about the violence in your neighborhood and how does this increase of violence make you feel so what we'd like to do is cut to a segment to listen to their voices and hear what they have to say and then we'll want we do now that we've listened to the voices or the youth in their own voices i'd like to ask james to begin the next section which would be speaking with the different services and they come fast all right number one the main thing we focus on this keeping people alive and free we meet young people where they are and we offer them a different way of thinking so that they make better decisions that will keep them alive and free because we believe that the information that they're operating off of is the wrong information and that information has caused them to put their lives in increasing danger of being lost and their freedom of being lost when it's hidden in disguise there's these skills will help you survive managing mysteries so we try to work at getting them to recognize that this information is actually negative to them and that it comes from a variety of different places it could come from the family can come from the neighborhood it could come from friends definitely come from the media and once they recognize it to help them get that stuff out and then input some new stuff a new way of thinking that indeed will help encourage and increase their chances of being a lot of free so we help them  activities would help them we also work with putting them through college and that everybody would like to go to college but we have a we created a scholarship program for those who would like to go to college have the opportunity to go to any college that they would like to do so by participating at least a year within the program wherever they are or completely following in doing the right thing and we want to help keep in the google keep help keeping the up to do the right thing and all the right track we have some that may be wavering or thinking about doing the wrong thing or messing around a little bit we want to pull them over and then we have some that totally doing the wall thing and we want to bring them all the way around so we set the conditions for them to change or to reinforce what they already have and then we offer if they want to way to get out or a way to go further with their lives so we offer a scholarship program as well couple of things we do work with young people at the school sites to school adoption program and we also work with young people in lock up facilities as in alameda county juvenile hall where unit five every other friday myself and other members of the boys club go to work with young men to help redirect their lot to help redirect their lives and again as i say eliminate risk have a place where we meet every tuesday night and in the spring there's a college readiness program but for the most part every tuesday from five thirty to ten o'clock we meet with people we work in since of late on the things about just vocal except we added academic component to it as well so we brush up on their skills in terms of literacy in terms of math but our waste d around that methodology of staying alive and free and these are the things that you can do there were help that outcome in these detainees that if you participate in will will take you away from stay in a free rather than help you stay in a lot of free so basically ten sixty to the c street is that for cisco you show up at five thirty and you become a part of it the only thing you fill out is just an information sheet for our records but other than that it's real simple to become a part of there's no joining there's no indoctrination and none of that juice come with the mindset that you want to stay a lot of free and perhaps if you want to go to college  can you tell us a little about the street soldiers and how they came about three soldiers is a term that anybody actually can be you can be the ladies here from girls inc to follow their montra is simply it's simply defined as anyone who is willing to live in a balance in their lives or in the community so anybody working against the can working against violence in the community or within their lives to be in their family could be within their peer group well about definition that's the street the term or the concept came up years ago  omega boys club was asked to come on co host with you know and then a little bit after that they left the show up to him and he's been doing the show every since from sunday sunday night from eight to ten for about fifteen years d how did the street soldiers deal with kids who have been victims there's a number of ways the number one thing we try to do is help them deal with their anger their fear when they're paying i would like to use an analogy a lot of tears a lot of young people and adults for that matter walking around like balloons they're full and they're ready to pop because they have so much in there and it doesn't take very much for them to pop  a lot of times that's what happens when you turn to a kid after something took place and said did you think about that did you think when she was getting ready to do and they honestly didn't they just reacted all of a sudden because quote unquote their balloon was full so we act really quick before we transition to girls inc just with the thought that now that we've been seeing statistics showing that girls are more involved in becoming incarcerated as well as part of the violence in society so as we talked with mr hankins and i know your program is for boys as well as girls yes but the idea of kids are getting younger more girls more boys and the idea of how or where do we start the turning point so i know all of you work in schools and i know that that's one of the original points so when we come back from this commercial break we'd like to transition into girls inc as well but also talk to you all about what you see the changes are and how getting involved in school helps you to begin to transition away from violen  we're back this question is for mr and what type of programs do you offer for girls we offered continuum of programs from kindergarten through the end of high school based mostly and both oakland and san leandro we serve kindergarten through eighth grades in our continuum at the school sites we focus on literacy and also sports fitness and nutrition our programming is intentional and compensatory we have approached the girls as if there are the asset base they already have the skills and we're just fostering those skills so we're very much about being proactive in a preventive service towards violence and then we also do programming for high school students as well so with the programming for high school girls we focus on health and fitness and leadership and advocacy and also pregnancy prevention programming and  most of those programs most of those programs it is at school sites and some of them are at the girls and offices of san leandro is your program for girls only we do what age group service and how can kids join your program for the school based programs the children have to be attending school and it goes from kindergarten through eighth grade we also have a concordance park office which is on bryn and sixty second and girls nine to fourteen can go to that site and they don't have to go to any of the schools or in the neighborhood anyone can go to that site and then courtney if you want to talk about dealing with the community based programs since the girls are older we do want to give them the skills of filling out applications and going through an interview process and letting them know that they've accomplished something by finishing those steps and so for the older girls we do have an application process and different steps they need to follow to get into the program and it's offered at the their school sites and then we do have one program that is at this and the entrance site but we do encourage the girls to apply and just to overcome the fear of not knowing how that process works so after they do get out of our program and they have those skills for future reference going to under served communities and we provide after school programming where violence may be an issue in the community and we were fired a safe space for the children after school as well as services and resources for their parents and like currently  parker we have ten hours of mental health services as well that would be right on site for families and the girls so where we're a place of the girls can be safe but also a place where they can vent how they're feeling and a place where they can build leadership skills as well as do community involvement projects so they can clean up the neighborhoods be an active part of their community is a lot on nutrition trying to get farmers markets into the community so really being asset base we of really awesome families really awesome participants so we're just encouraging that as we go through so being a quick follow up question to all agencies which is most of you are connected with the schools do you have a volunteer contingency or staff contingency for youth that possibly disappear from your program so there's someone who tracks youth that maybe had participated for a while and then if they disappear or kind of fall off or someone is possibly kind of much as possible so if for example we don't see somebody we're shooting the e mail we'll call them or leave we we've gone to their schools or their homes to find out was going on with them  so there is a it is not sophisticated in terms of the case managing but we treated everybody like a family we have a saying we're not all related we're we're may not be family but we're all related so when somebody doesn't show up we kind of wonder what happened because we know that so many things are going on that if we don't see them on tuesday something could happen to them since we basically get together once a week so then that kind of tells us we need to check to see if this person is ok if anything has happened within the family or to so and it's not just a staff or volunteer who does it the kids do it on the too so if one of their peers doesn't see their way over there get on the phone and text and where are you are you ok because that's the culture in the atmosphere that we've created and that's out expectation is that everybody will take care everybody we do have we do have a continuum of services that girls think we try to keep participants from kindergarten all the way to the end of high school and all of our program are very fortunate as an organization to actually have a lot of staff in each state has corners as well as paid staff so we have the ability to track our purchased and we maintain those records for i think eighteen plus years for each participant as well as anything that goes through mental health services they're required to also trucker participants as well we'd like to thank both agencies for coming you know the the impact that you're having on our youth is tremendous all the kids that we work with in alameda county no girls inc you've been around since one thousand nine hundred sixty four and i believe your agency of alameda county girls inc of alameda county is celebrating their fiftieth anniversary so we do have to give you your anniversary props and also make a boys club you know you've been a fixture especially within alameda county juvenile hall and we appreciate the services that both agencies provide to our use in our local community and alameda county so i'm not sure if each of you maybe has a few words or just a quick plug for your agency that you'd like to share but we'd like to give you the opportunity to do so we are hiring  we still have a few more minutes just thank you for having us and just all the girls out there just continue to be strong smart involved in every way that you can so we're almost we're almost at the end but again