by RNH Nello

Created on: February 08, 2009

During recent months my community has been involved with trying to find ways to minimize or even eliminate youth violence. Leadership both elected and from the private sector have attended meetings where concerns have been voiced seeking solutions.

We are fortunate that our community has a number of very active neighborhood associations' which have picked-up this challenge by sponsoring meetings inviting the leaders of the city, county, religious community, as well as many other groups of the private sector to join together in such discussions. Interestingly, solutions accepted by all have been slow to develop and clearly emerging is a difference in perspective that supports different and incompatible solutions.

Some make the point that the youth of today are very different in that such youth feel isolated from the mainstream of society and therefore new ways of reaching them must be developed.
It is suggested that such solutions, in general, are focused on using new electronic media to reach such youth directly. Usually, such approaches, down play the need for direct adult intervention and assert that older approaches will at best generate ridicule by today's youth. Most suggestions reflecting such an approach begin with the writing of a Grant Request and the establishment of an oversight board.

Others, note that not all youth are involved in serious violence and that some organizations have demonstrated long term success working with youth and taking advantage of methods developed and tested over multiple generations, and as such, define the right path to follow. Such organizations include 4H, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, FFA, Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers and Big Sisters. To a large extent these organizations rely on adult volunteers and local donations.

Of these two directions each organization has its own unique structure, goals, and procedural details.
Even so, a significant difference is in the dependency on local adults. The former approach is more a-lined with grants paying for management, with a significant element being the convincing of the youth to allow' a form of adult oversight of activities in ways defined by the youth. Opposed to this, the latter approach is more dependent on volunteer adults with a hands-on role modal commitment to help youth learn to become teen leaders and responsible adults. Interestingly, in meetings to discuss youth violence supporters of these two approaches found compromise a challenge to the degree that no common ground

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>