The Primary Violence Prevention Grant Program offers developmentally and age-appropriate support services to 10-15-year-old youth at high risk for violence, but who are not yet necessarily engaging in violence.
Grantees ensure youth have increased access to adult (and near peer) mentors to help strengthen the skills needed to make positive decisions, advance education equity, and deliver in or after-school learning opportunities, employment, and social support for youth through exposure to different careers and/or age-appropriate hands-on experiences in employment and school settings.
The intervention framework weave culturally responsive Social and Emotional Learning concepts with Experiential Learning models to deliver engaging, stimulating activities that have a real-world basis. The experiential activities help the youth connect what they are learning to prior knowledge and apply it to new situations or problems.
The general scope of services enhance:
- Safety & emotional well-being
- Health and education equity
- Leadership of youth and people with lived experiences
- Civic engagement/Youth activism
- Behavioral health support
Our approach is guided by the following core principles
- Racial Equity
- Build and sustain leadership of people of color and those from underrepresented populations
- Ensure programming is data driven, evidence based or evidence-informed, theory based and directly highlights and addresses racial inequities
- Provide services to people of color through community collaborations and networking building
- Address structured and institutional racism through a variety of policy and system strategies
- Provide Culturally responsive Trauma-and- resilience informed approaches
- Promote a just society with equity in economics, political and social rights, and opportunities for people of color