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November 2015 in Review - SYVPI Newsletter
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In November, a delegation from Seattle attended the Fall Convening of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), held in Baltimore, MD. The Seattle delegation included SYVPI Director Mariko Lockhart, Pastor Lawrence Willis, President of the United Black Christian Clergy, Eleuthera Lisch, head of Government Relations for YMCA of Greater Seattle, Sergeant Adrian Diaz from the Seattle Police Department, Rodrigo Sanchez from Mayor Murray's Innovation Team, Jennifer Alsawadi, Youth and Young Adult Services Manager, and Terry Hayes, Strategic Advisor, both with the City of Seattle Human Services Department.
Pastor Willis attended the 3-day conference and its faith-based workshop track. He was especially moved by the workshops which provided a realistic and uncompromising view of what was happening to youth and the community in Baltimore and around the country. He was also very moved by what Baltimore is facing: "When you have over 300 homicides a year, you have a lot of funerals, a lot of trauma in a concentrated area." Pastor Willis came back to Seattle determined to show the people of Baltimore that people see them, see their situation, and want to help. He says, "I look forward to next steps, and to see what we can do together about what is happening locally and across the country. We have to do something."
Click here to read the full story about the Fall Convening and Pastor Willis's impressions...
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One can easily mistake the SYVPI youths participating in the Joy of Soccer project as young journalists in training. Inside a small room at the Multimedia Resources and Training Institute (MMRTI), located on South Jackson Street in the heart Seattle's Central District, youths sit in front of a large green screen, reminiscent of a newsroom set. Assaye Abunie, who led the Joy of Soccer project at MMRTI, hopes to expose these youth to cutting edge video and photography skills that schools often do not offer. While one of the main focuses of the project was to create a documentary about soccer, the other was to have youths use their newfound skills to learn more about their local community.
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The Washington State Department of Health will be busy this fall to complete the Statewide Suicide Prevention Plan for Washington that addresses the suicide prevention needs of all communities in Washington State.
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Resources and Articles
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OJJDP Resource: Improving Youth Outcomes in State juvenile Justice Systems
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When Social Media
Fuels Gang Violence
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have become an everyday part of life for many young people - and increasingly, the way some, including rival gang members, threaten each other. The practice is called "cyber banging," and it's often led to fights and even death.
In this report, Desmond Patton, a professor of social work at Columbia University, and Henry Lieberman, a visiting professor at MIT's Media Lab, describe how they are working to create a cyber-banging gauge to understand content on social media to learn how words can turn to violence. The goal would be to recognize patterns and try to do things to de-escalate the rhetoric.
Patton says he and fellow researchers want to take these efforts even further. "One idea is that if we can decode the language, then perhaps we can send triggers to social workers, violence workers who are embedded in these neighborhoods already, so that they can utilize the strategies they already have to reach out to youth before the post becomes an injury or a homicide."
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Safe Youth, Safe Community is a newsletter published by the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. Our mission is to prevent and reduce youth violence, which has disproportionately affected communities of color in Seattle, through coordinated community mobilization to identify youth at risk of perpetuating or being a victim of violence and connect them with needed support in reaching their full potential.
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