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As Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month continues, we want to highlight a way youth can share how they would respond to relationship violence.
The “You Gotta Do Something!” Youth Video Contest asks young people under age 21 to finish telling the story of Rob and Ashley, a fictional couple who get into a fight at a party. Youth enter the contest by watching a 14-minute video about Rob and Ashley on YouTube before creating their own video to show what happens next.
Young people must be sponsored by a youth worker or teacher to enter. Winning teams receive a set of educational films written by teens and filmed by professionals, or a gift certificate. The deadline to enter is noon Eastern on February 28, 2013.
The event is sponsored by Scenarios USA, which uses writing and film to promote youth leadership and advocacy, and co-sponsored by the Healthy Teen Network and Futures Without Violence. Entries will be judged based on the strength of their message and their creativity.
Read the full contest description and guidelines.
Watch the “You Gotta Do Something!” video on YouTube.
Later this month, we’ll share advice from experts on how you can recognize signs of possible dating abuse, and what you can do to help.
More From NCFY
"NCFY Recommends: Native Youth Harness the Power of Video to Address Teen Pregnancy"
Last month, Chicago's National Runaway Switchboard became the National Runaway Safeline. For nearly 40 years, the Family and Youth Services Bureau has funded the organization to be the federally designated national communication system for runaway and homeless youth.
FYSB's Acting Associate Commissioner, Debbie A. Powell, recently wrote about the name change on The Family Room, the official blog of the Administration for Children and Families. Here's what she said about the long history between the Safeline and FYSB and the importance of the national communication system:
Every year, thousands of young people--and adults who care about them--contact 1-800-RUNAWAY, the federally designated national hotline for runaway and homeless youth. Some of these teens are on the streets. Others are still at home, have had a fight with a parent, and don’t know what to do. Many know someone—an aunt or uncle, a sister or brother, a grandparent—they want to reunite with, but they don’t have the money to get to them.
A Hotline Is Born
Forty years ago, these young people would have had nowhere to turn. Then in 1974, as part of the landmark Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, which established the nation’s system of youth shelters and services, the federal government established a national communication system for runaway and homeless young people.
...
Read the rest of the post on the Family Room blog.
Ravi Ramaswamy is a former youth worker who has moved on to help other youth workers improve their programs. As training coordinator at the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality in Ypsilanti, MI, he helps youth-serving organizations implement the evidence-based Youth Program Quality Intervention.
The intervention starts with an assessment that staff themselves conduct to determine how well components of a program -- like a life skills class or a sexual health training, for example -- are promoting safety, support, peer interaction and youth engagement. Then they decide as a group where they want to work on program improvements.
Ramaswamy talked to us about how the Youth Program Quality Intervention gives staff the tools to improve young people’s experiences of those things.
NCFY: Can you name some changes that programs typically go through when they use the Youth Program Quality Intervention?
RAMASWAMY: The changes are always based on the results of the assessment. Based on the data they get back they decide what their goals are going to be for change. As this process really grabs hold and takes root, there's a unifying language around program quality, and people actually start to use the same words to mean the same things. That's actually a huge development for most programs because if you all mean the same thing when you talk about conflict, you can have more productive conversations about things.
We promote with the adults the same positive interaction and engagement values we are looking to see at the point of service between young people and adults. For staff, it can feel really empowering and really legitimizing, too. Like, the work that you're doing is professional work, and here's a set of standards that you can work to meet, and you can get better. It can be a real revelation for staff, and I think that applies as much to those who work in shelters and [teen pregnancy] prevention programs as it does to people who work in after-school recreation clinics.
NCFY: What about the programs serving youth who have experienced trauma? Is work different with these young people?
RAMASWAMY: When I was working for the [youth shelter and drop-in center], we found that our scores were very high in the safety part of the pyramid. Which was great because that was part of our mission, to provide a safe place for young people to come. But our scores kind of tapered off as we moved up the pyramid. Which is fairly typical of any program even if they're not serving runaway and homeless youth.
What I think is really great about the tool is it establishes a set of standards and a way to measure against those standards. But it's not a high-stakes tool. It's not something where someone is telling you, “You have to get a certain score on it to get funding.” It gave us an opportunity as staff to say, "Hey, great, we're doing what our mission says we do,” and, “Do we also want to push in our programs for more, so that we acknowledge that these other scores are lower and we're not necessarily providing all the opportunities for interaction and engagement that maybe we could be?"
In a way that gave us, as frontline staff, total ownership over our own professional development process. And a way to hold each other accountable that felt like we were coming from a place of solidarity, that it wasn't something that was being imposed on us or dictated to us. And this is something that we see in programs again and again.
Youth employment is at its lowest point since World War II, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT, an initiative that tracks the wellbeing of children and youth in the United States. That finding might not surprise youth workers who’ve tried to find a job for a homeless young person, but “Youth and Work: Restoring Teen and Young Adult Connections to Opportunity” (PDF, 2.39 MB) has a lot to say about what we can do to turn things around for young people, especially the more than 6.5 million 16- to 24-year-olds who aren’t in school and don’t have jobs.
We spoke with one of the report’s authors, Associate Director of Policy Reform and Data Laura Speer, about how we can help create more and better education and employment opportunities for our nation’s disconnected young people.
NCFY: What’s at stake when we talk about youth employment? Why bring light to this issue now?
Speer: A lot of the jobs that were previously available to young people are no longer obtainable, being done by computers, or are being occupied by older people who have been hit by the recession. Employers are more likely to hire the person that has experience rather than a youth who has never held a job. We have a whole generation of young people who are entering the workforce. We need to make sure they are prepared.
We need to make sure we are helping youth who have gotten off track for many different reasons be able to get back on the pathway to education and employment by being able to offer programs that also have multiple options for attaining their goals. When young people are not on a traditional path, such has having dropped out of school, and are given an opportunity to get on a career path, they take advantage of it and really thrive.
NCFY: What does the report say about disconnected teen parents?
Speer: We have found that one-fifth of disconnected youth are parents of young children. Teen parents need to be put on the pathway to be able to support not only themselves but their children. We interviewed several parenting youth and found that many of them said that the birth of their child was the reason they wanted to return to school or pursue a GED.
In the report we recognized employment options for youth that have multiple pathways in helping them get readjusted with education options and into the workforce. We’ve found that the opportunity to get on a career path while working towards educational goals is more advantageous for disconnected youth. Programs like YouthBuild have worked for those that have dropped out of school and want to get back on track.
NCFY: What can youth workers take away from this report?
Speer: Youth workers are an important component in building the future success of the United States workforce and haven’t been given the credit they deserve. Reports show that by 2020, 1.5 million jobs will go unfilled causing the U.S. to face a “skillgap”-- lack of skill and education to meet the needs of those positions. Youth workers have the opportunity to help fill these gaps by encouraging youth to continue to pursue their educations and providing information about skills and jobs.
"Promising Practices in the Prevention of Intimate Partner Violence Among Adolescents" (abstract). Violence and Victims, Vol. 27, No. 6 (December 2012).
What it’s about: Researchers at West Chester University of Pennsylvania looked at programs created to curb teen dating violence and assessed whether they met nine criteria of effective prevention programs. The criteria included promoting healthy relationships, being culturally relevant to young people's lives, and systematically comparing results to the program's goals.
Why read it: Research shows that 25 percent of teens experience dating violence. But few prevention programs have been rigorously evaluated to see if they are making a difference, the authors say. In the article, they take a look at what we already know about what works to prevent intimate partner violence among teens -- and what more we need to learn.
Biggest takeaways for youth workers: The researcher found only one program that met all nine criteria and therefore could be considered a "model program." Safe Dates is a school-based prevention program for 8th and 9th graders. Staff get intensive training and use a variety of tools, including role-play, theater productions and lesson plans, to teach youth about healthy and unhealthy relationships.
Generally, the nine qualities of effective prevention programs can serve as a guiding framework for youth workers looking to reduce teen dating violence, the authors write. (The qualities are listed in the paper and in the abstract of "What Works in Prevention," a 2003 article published in The American Psychologist.) Agencies may find this guidance particularly useful, they say, given a recent push for evidence-based interventions in youth-serving settings.
Additional references: Learn more about Safe Dates and related programs and practices in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices.
(Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, FYSB or the Administration for Children and Families. Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of these and other publications.)
February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, a chance for youth workers to teach young people about healthy relationships and how to protect themselves from physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Research shows that teen dating violence not only affects young people while it's happening. It also can lead to health problems like eating disorders and suicidal thoughts later on in life.
We decided to test two smartphone applications designed to prevent dating violence and sexual abuse by quickly connecting youth to emergency help. The apps, Circle of 6 and OnWatch, were winners of the Apps Against Abuse technology challenge issued by the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services in 2011. Although both tools are primarily geared toward college students, we think they may be useful for high-school and out-of-school youth, too.
| Circle of 6 | OnWatch | |
|---|---|---|
|
Available For |
iPhone, Android |
iPhone, Android |
|
Cost |
Free |
Free 30-day trial, $4.99 monthly or $49.99 annually |
|
Number of friends users can select to receive alerts |
Six |
Three |
|
Emergency numbers |
Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence |
911, campus police, friends |
|
GPS feature |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Sample alerts |
"Come and get me. I need help getting home safely" (includes GPS location); "Call me and pretend you need me. I need an interruption" |
"I need help" (includes GPS location) |
|
Option to let friends know you reached your destination safely |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Other |
Link to loveisrespect.org |
Users can set a timer if they're in a potentially unsafe place, like a parking garage; if a password isn’t entered after the time is up, an emergency alert is set off |
More From NCFY
"What’s Love Got to Do With It? Stemming Relationship Abuse Among Street Youth"
"Q&A: What Can Be Done to Teach Healthy Relationship Skills to Foster Youth?"
"Youth Speak Out: Chicago Youth Say No to Dating Violence"
"Primary Sources: Why are Homeless Youth at High-Risk for Dating Violence?"
In our latest podcast, we hear from Bill Martin, executive director of Waterford Country School, a Connecticut youth shelter that will soon finish the three-year implementation of the CARE Model. He talks about how this evidence-based practice enables Waterford to better serve youth.
Five values. Five weeks of giving. That’s how Volunteers of America Chesapeake, a human services agency whose work stretches from Baltimore, MD, to Virginia Beach, conceives its year-end giving campaign each December. Each week, the campaign focuses on one of VOA Chesapeake’s core values—caring, quality, trust, faith and respect—and highlights the successes of the organization’s many programs and experts, says communication specialist Danielle Milner.
This past year, the campaign brought in $188,000, nearly two-thirds more than the previous December. Though traditional direct mail and face-to-face marketing played a role, the results wouldn’t have been possible without social media, Milner says. The campaign used Facebook, Twitter, a WordPress blog, YouTube videos, texting, email and the organization’s website to get people interested and convince them to make donations.
“The dynamic of donors is changing,” Milner says, explaining why incorporating social media and mobile technology into the campaign made sense to VOA Chesapeake’s fundraising staff. “They’re becoming younger and they’re becoming more mobile.”
Here are four tips for running a short-term social media fundraising campaign:
1. Simplify your editorial calendar
Choosing weekly and daily themes can make it easier to come up with blog posts, status updates and tweets. In addition to designating each week with one of the five core values, VOA Chesapeake named each day of the week: Motivational Monday, Text Tuesday, Wednesday’s Word, Thank You Thursday and Fun Friday.
Come up with your themes well before the campaign’s launch. That way you can prepare more time-intensive products, like videos, podcasts and staff interviews, ahead of time.
2. Divide the work
A social media fundraising campaign can take up a lot of staff time. VOA Chesapeake divided the work among the five-person fundraising and communication team, assigning each person a day of the week. Even if you don’t have a fundraising or communication department, you can recruit and train social-media savvy volunteers to help out. It’s also a good idea to get influential and inspirational people from your organization to write a few blog posts, status updates or tweets. Milner says some of VOA Chesapeake’s most popular tweets came from their chaplain.
3. More photos, less text
If you have an organizational or personal Facebook page, you may have noticed that photos get more people clicking than other types of posts. “Folks are connected to pictures,” Milner says. “Find pictures that tell a story and show what you’re doing.”
4. Connect your online “channels”
Milner cautions against dumping every bit of information into a newsletter article or status update. Instead, she says, share a photo. Link the photo to a blog post that tells a little bit more of the story. Link the blog post to a Web page where people can read about your program in depth. Spreading information out in that way can turn casual browsers into ambassadors for the cause, she says.
"We want to draw you in,” she says. “Once you’re interested, we want to keep you. And that’s the kind of thing that you tell a friend about.”
More From NCFY
"Right on the Money: Lessons in Social Media Fundraising"
"Right on the Money: 'Crowdfunding' for Youth-Serving Organizations--Indiegogo vs. Kickstarter"
“Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale”
by Rachel Lloyd
In this memoir, a well-known advocate exposes the horrors of sex trafficking, and tells us what it will take to create a society that values and protects girls. NCFY read it, and we tell you why we think it’s a good read for youth workers.
Rachel Lloyd grew up in England with a depressive, alcoholic mother and her series of violent boyfriends. By 14, she had dropped out of school. Faking her age, she did factory work to keep a roof over their heads.
“The pressure to have a baby, at fourteen, already feels intense,” she writes in her memoir “Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale.” “The desire to create a family, to have someone who will love me, is overwhelming at times. … Having a baby, getting a council flat, working and living and dying here, feels like the most attainable goal.”
Instead, she bought a ticket to Germany, where she wound up broke and desperate. She took a job at a strip club to try to save money for a ticket home. Then she met JP, a former American soldier with a crack addiction. He quickly won her over and then turned violent, routinely beating her and nearly killing her, when she didn’t bring home enough money to feed his habit.
Fighting for a Better World
Lloyd eventually found safety and the support to change her life through a tight-knit, accepting community on a U.S. military base. After moving to New York to be an outreach worker to sexually exploited girls, she founded Girls Educational and Mentoring Services in 1998 to recreate that oasis as best she could.
Lloyd weaves her dramatic but ultimately hopeful story with those of a number of girls she’s helped -- and many she was unable to help -- at GEMS. The result is an examination of how society repeatedly fails and victimizes sexually exploited and trafficked girls, and what these girls need from “the system” as they try to put their lives back together again.
Lloyd writes:
Regardless of the circumstances, what makes the most difference in whether a girl leaves [a life of exploitation] or not when the door opens up is if she believes she has options, resources, somewhere to go, and the support she’ll need once she’s out. Without that glimmer of hope, whether it comes in the form of family, a program like GEMS, or a church community like the one that helped me, it’s unlikely that she’ll leave. And then the door will close just as quickly as it opened, leaving her feeling trapped once more, and this time even more convinced that this is the life she is destined to lead.
Even for youth workers, sex trafficking can seem unimaginable and overwhelming. Lloyd’s book shows that the victimization is real. But the book also argues that solutions to the problem can start in small, manageable doses – a truly safe space, patience, a non-judgmental ear.
More From NCFY
Listen to our podcast interview with Rachel Lloyd about combating sex trafficking.
As we continue to learn more about the reasons young people may be sexually exploited, some researchers say Native American young women may be particularly at risk.
VAWNet, an online resource of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, in 2011 reviewed the research on Native women and sex trafficking (PDF, 781KB). The authors of the review point to a 2007 analysis of police records in Hennepin County, MN, which includes Minneapolis. Native women accounted for nearly a quarter of the prostitution arrests that year—a percentage more than 12 times their representation in the county’s population.
The VAWNet report and several other publications over the past few years shed light on how Native women become victims and what might be done to help them recover.
How Sex Traffickers Victimize the Innocent
The VAWNET report looked at research from Minnesota, Alaska and Canada. Exploiters, the report’s authors say, typically recruit Native victims of commercial sexual exploitation in three ways:
- The exploiter poses as a boyfriend or friend, treating the victim with kindness and offering shelter. Then the exploiter coerces the victim to prostitute.
- Gangs or other pimps use violence, including gang rape, to force a woman or girl into prostitution, or they threaten to hurt the victim’s family.
- Traffickers target vulnerable Native women and youth who may be unable to recognize exploitation because of mental illness, substance abuse, or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Compassion and Cultural Sensitivity
Recognizing sex trafficking of Native women as a problem, Minnesota advocates expanded a program for girls with drug and alcohol problems (PDF, 533KB). They aimed to reduce girls’ likelihood of being trafficked. Girls received case management, holistic health care and cultural education and learned to do traditional crafts. Staff educated youth about sex trafficking. They also helped each girl plan where she would go if she was in danger of being targeted by exploiters.
The program’s staff found that simply asking girls if they’d been traded for sex opened the door for them to talk about their experiences—even if they chose not to do so right away.
Similar to Victims of Torture
Victims of sex trafficking, whatever their race or ethnicity, often undergo years of physical, mental and emotional abuse. Like survivors of torture, rape and domestic violence, many sex trafficking victims suffer from PTSD, anxiety attacks and depression, say the authors of a paper on evidence-based mental health treatment (PDF, 121KB) for trafficking victims, published by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
The HHS authors found little research on what might help sex trafficking victims deal with their symptoms. But a number of evidence-based therapies, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and exposure therapy, have been used successfully with similarly victimized people. Those therapies (after a complete psychological exam) are a good place to start when treating sex trafficking victims, the authors write.
Read the Articles
“New Language, Old Problem: Sex Trafficking of American Indian Women and Children” (PDF, 781KB). National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (October 2011).
“American Indian Adolescent Girls: Vulnerability to Sex Trafficking, Intervention Strategies” (PDF, 533KB). American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2012).
“Evidence-Based Mental Health Treatment for Victims of Human Trafficking” (PDF, 121KB). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (2010).
(Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, FYSB or the Administration for Children and Families. Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of this and other publications.)
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