Youth Empowerment Solutions (YES)

Principal Investigator: Marc Zimmerman
Contact Information: Susan Morrel-Samuels at sumosa@umich.edu
Project Dates: 2003 to 2009
Funding: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; PRC/MI Core Project

Description:

Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities (YES) is an interdisciplinary community change project developed by The Flint Youth Violence Prevention Center (YVPC) academic-community partnership. Empowerment theory, positive youth development, and ecological theory guide the project development, evaluation, and plans for sustaining the work after the funding period ends.

The goals of the project are to provide youth with opportunities for meaningful involvement in preventing youth violence and creating community change, enhance neighborhood organizations’ ability to engage youth in their activities, and change the social and physical environment to reduce and prevent violence (especially youth violence). The project involves youth in the process of changing community physical and social environments and includes three components: 1) youth empowerment activities; 2) neighborhood organization development; and 3) community development projects that involve youth and organizations working together. Youth empowerment activities include workshops for program planning, budgeting, implementation, and evaluation; opportunities to engage peers in community change efforts; developing ethnic identity and pride; and to work with adults to achieve these goals.

The project focuses on youth and neighborhood organizations in a middle school attendance area in Flint, Michigan. An adjacent middle school attendance area serves as a comparison community. These areas were selected because they have characteristics associated with high levels of youth violence, high rates of crime, as well as vital neighborhood organizations and a history of community activism.

The Youth Empowerment Solutions Program Implementation Guide (Kretman, et al) provides lesson plans for afterschool sessions, templates for community change projects and guidelines for adult advocate training.

Publications:

Franzen, S., Morrel-Samuels, S., Reischl, T., Zimmerman, M. (in press). Using process evaluation to strengthen intergenerational partnerships in the Youth Empowerment Solutions program. Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community

Presentations:

Kretman, S; Morrel-Samuels, S; Zimmerman, M; Roberts, E; Reischl, T; Franzen, S; Sharif, N. (2008). Empowering youth to create change: A community-level violence prevention curriculum. Paper presented at the American Public Health Association Conference. San Diego, CA.

Reischl, T.M., Kaminski, J., Zimmerman, M. A., Kruger, D. J., Morrel-Samuels, S., Franzen, S., & Roberts, E.  (May, 2008).  The challenges of empowering youth to mobilize community-level change and to evaluate the effects.  Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Prevention Research, San Francisco, CA.

Reischl, T, Zimmerman, M, Morrel-Samuels, S, Franzen, S, Roberts, E, Tyson, Y. Youth Empowerment Solutions: Connecting Youth with Neighborhood Organizations to Create Community Change. Paper presented at the American Public Health Association Conference, Washington, D.C. 2008

M. Zimmerman, P. Hutchison, S. Morrel-Samuels, T. Reischl.  A Youth Participation Model for Assessing Environmental Risk and Protective Factors and Developing Interventions for Youth Violence in Flint, Michigan, USA, International Injury Conference, April 2006.

Involving Youth in Violence Prevention, S. Morrel-Samuels, R. Roberts, N. Timmons, UNC Prevent Webinar, May 2006.

Wyatt, J. (May 2005). Youth Violence Prevention through Community-Level Change: YES! Oral presentation at the 2005 National Injury Prevention and Control Conference, Denver, CO.