Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities
| Status: | Archived |
|---|---|
| Conditions: | Healthy Studies |
| Therapuetic Areas: | Other |
| Healthy: | No |
| Age Range: | Any |
| Updated: | 7/1/2011 |
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.
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.
We found this trial at
1
site
1500 E Medical Center Dr
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
(734) 936-4000
University of Michigan Health Systems The University of Michigan is home to one of the...
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