Youth-Driven Anti-Violence Program

University-Assisted Community Schools (UACS) Youth-Driven Anti-Violence Program

Engaging youth in solving the problems of youth, school and community violence is a necessary and effective strategy to stop violence in the community.  The Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania is expanding its youth-driven anti-violence initiative that cultivates and supports a culture of anti-violence, safety, and peace for not only for students in West Philadelphia University-Assisted Community Schools but also for those schools’ neighborhoods. 

Goals include:

  • Reduce youth violence for West Philadelphia students in all University-Assisted Community Schools (UACS) and their neighborhoods by expanding Netter’s youth-driven anti-violence initiative that cultivates and supports a culture of anti-violence, safety, and peace
  • Collaboratively solve problems of youth and community violence WITH the voices and actions of youth
  • Create cultures of anti-violence and peace
  • Help youth develop attitudes and skills that will create cultures of anti-violence, safety, and peace that will reduce violence in their schools and communities
  • Further mobilize and connect a comprehensive array of partners and help aggregate and integrate their efforts into specific University-Assisted Community Schools to achieve greater impact

Activities

  • Create more safe spaces for youth.  Safe spaces are places and programs where youth and staff actively deploy anti-violence skills and more specifically create and celebrate cultures of anti-violence, safety, and peace.  Creating safe spaces will include the following:
    • Help existing activities and spaces become safe spaces. 
    • Work with youth and community partners to develop new, engaging programs that also effectively function as safe spaces.
    • Connect these safe spaces into larger safe spaces.  Individual programs or specific places in a school can only function as safe spaces if the overall school is safe for all students.
    • The program will connect safe spaces within the schools, both after school and school day, and expand to connect safe spaces in the community.
  • Use a youth-driven approach: engaging youth in reducing violence is a necessary and effective strategy to prevent violence in the community. 
    • Youth engage with peers and all members of the community. WE bring together expertise of youth, school, community and university partners.
    • Youth have leadership roles not only in identifying program strategies and activities but also in implementing them and teaching skills to their peers, from bystander intervention to teen mental health first aid.
    • Youth learn skills so that their own interactions do not escalate to violence or threats of violence.
    • With a focus on relationship violence, we will help reduce peer violence that will help reduce community violence. 
    • Youth learn to actively initiate and support violence de-escalation with their peers. They also learn about appropriate bystander intervention with their peers.
  • Aggregate, integrate, and mobilize a comprehensive array of partners to achieve greater impact.
    • Partners include Penn, School District, City (including but not limited to Office of Children and Families, Police, etc.) and community.
    • Partnerships will reduce existing fragmentation and help mobilize additional institutional and community resources.  Help youth develop attitudes and skills that will create cultures of anti-violence, safety, and peace that will reduce violence in their schools and communities.

Our high school UACS afterschool programs consist of Anti-Violence Teams that convene youth and adults, including school leadership, to create and implement activities that will improve the environment and safety in our UACS schools, during the school day as well as after school and summer. Students  serve as agents of change in their schools, helping to both prevent and act against violence. They also educate and engage their peers by leading workshops at both their high school and three neighboring K-8th grade UACS schools. They work with Netter’s existing after school activities at K-8 schools and high schools to incorporate anti-violence and safe space practices for 500+ students enrolled in those programs, as well as help create new safe spaces such as through the Penn-West Philadelphia Basketball League.

Contact: Paulette Branson, Director of Student Engagement & Community Building, pbran@sas.upenn.edu