Say YES to Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities
Safe & Sound was pleased to present a full-day workshop featuring the Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities (YES) curriculum. YES is a community-level violence prevention program that empowers youth to work with adults in making positive changes in their communities. Youth in the YES program work to change the entire community as a way to prevent youth violence. In YES, youth are part of the solution, they have power to make decisions about how to make their community more peaceful and stop youth violence. Youth and adults work together to accomplish the program goals.
This curriculum is especially beneficial to those of you working to implement the Crime Strategy Initiative (CSI) or who may be interested in becoming a S.A.F.E.-funded Safe & Sound Safe Place. In keeping with Safe & Sound’s commitment to provide high-quality, evidence-based youth crime prevention programming, the training was opened up to all of the Safe Places, and the result was a packed house and a last minute scramble for more chairs.
The YES curriculum units presented included:
I. Youth as Leaders introduces participants to the YES program, builds group norms and team identification, provides examples of youth leadership, engages participants in leadership roles within the program, involves participants in setting goals for the year, and motivates them to work toward these goals.
II. Learning about Our Community provides participants with skills and experiences to identify and assess conditions in their community that may either contribute to or prevent youth violence.
III. Improving our Community provides youth with opportunities for learning vicariously about other successful community change projects and guides them through a process to develop their own project ideas.
IV. Building Intergenerational Partnerships prepares young people for working on community change in equal partnerships with adults.
V. Planning for Change takes the participants through the process of transforming their ideas for community change projects into concrete proposals that include a description of the project, project goals, a budget and timeline.
VI. Action and Reflection encompasses the implementation of the community change projects. The unit provides structures for the youth and adult participants to evaluate and reflect on their work.
Together, these steps lead to changes within the youth, the adults, and the community which lead to decreases in youth violence. The training excited and motivated participants and additional steps to implement here in Milwaukee are in the works.
