Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities
Condition: Violence; Juvenile Delinquency; Social Problems; Social Control, Informal
Study type: Interventional
Phase: Phase 1

Summary: 
      This project is an evaluation of an intervention to involve youth in creating community
      change for peace promotion and violence prevention. The intervention, Youth Empowerment
      Solutions for Peaceful Communities (YES), includes three components: youth empowerment
      activities, neighborhood organization development, and community development projects that
      involve youth and organizations working together.

      Hypothesis 1: Efforts to engage youth in the community change process will enhance their
      attachment to their community, reduce their problem behaviors, and begin to change norms
      among their peers about community violence and interpersonal problem solving.

      Hypothesis 2: Efforts to make community-based organizations more youth-friendly and engaging
      will assist them to be more effective in reaching their community enhancement goals and will
      expand youth involvement in their mission.

      Hypothesis 3: Efforts to create more health-enhancing land use (e.g., beautification,
      community gardens, parks development) will improve social organization (e.g., social capital,
      social cohesion, and social support), and reduce the level of violent incidents and crime in
      the community.
    

Detailed description: 
      The program will focus on youth and neighborhood organizations in one middle-school
      attendance area. A nearby middle-school attendance area will serve as a comparison community.
      We will assess change in community norms, fear, social cohesion and social capital using an
      existing community survey of adults in the two neighborhoods. A similar survey will assess
      changes in youths' social norms, fears, perceptions of social cohesion and social capital, as
      well as their violent behavior and ethnic identity and pride. We will also compare the
      intervention and comparison neighborhoods on several community-level measures including
      police incident data, hospital injury reports, school suspension data, and ratings of
      neighborhood qualities (e.g., vacant lots, community gardens, social interaction).

      The long-term goals of YES are to:

        1. modify environmental conditions that contribute to youth violence;

        2. promote social norms supportive of community participation and nonviolence;

        3. increase perceptions of neighborhood safety among residents; and

        4. reduce the incidence of youth violence perpetration and victimization.
    

Intervention name(s): Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): YES is a multi-faceted program that (1) engages 7th and 8th graders in a youth development program, (2) enhances neighborhood organizations' ability to include youth in their activities, and (3) connects the youth participants and adults in neighborhood organizations (e.g., crime watches, block groups, neighborhood associations) to carry out neighborhood improvement activities (e.g., community gardens, parks cleanup).
Allocation: Non-Randomized
Intervention model: Single Group Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Youth Violence; Prevention