On December 2nd, Austin, Caleb, and myself went out to Jerusalem New York to visit the people at Strong Youth. Strong Youth is an organization that works with children in gangs, or children who are at risk of joining a gang, on a basis of intervention and prevention. They go to schools all over New York doing workshops with students. They have many people work in schools as guidance counselors. These people work to better the lives of these kids. When we went there, they had a whiteboard with what looked like a set of rules. When we asked, we were told that they had started with a new group of people, and that those were the ground rules that the kids came up with. I thought that it was a really good thing that these kids were able to come together to make some rules for civil conversation that they could all abide by. We also learned about how organizations like this work. They said that they would integrate their people into the school they wanted to work with, then start working with the kids, instead of just showing up one day. People tend to pay more attention to someone who they actually know, as opposed to a stranger. They have found that this strategy actually works, which is something we look for. We were told about one man who experienced Strong Youth, and later said that it changed his life. He now works with them, which is meaningful.
