Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities

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.