Emmanuel Research Review, Issue No. 49

By Jin Min Lee (Business Manager, Applied Evaluation System) and
Jeremiah Rood (Research Intern, Emmanuel Gospel Center)

The goal of the Youth Violence Systems Project is to create a system dynamics model of youth violence in Boston which reflects reality, has predictive and analytical value, and incorporates input and feedback from community stakeholders. This computer model is being developed as an effective tool to help community, academic, political, and institutional stakeholders develop more effective strategies to reduce youth violence.

The Project is ongoing, but the community effort has begun to bear fruit already, and can be regarded as a resource for those in Boston-area ministry. From its conception, YVSP held that it is crucial to understand and address the problem of youth violence from a holistic perspective. It represents a collaborative effort between the Emmanuel Gospel Center, the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston, Boston TenPoint Coalition, High Risk Youth Network, and the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley.

The Youth Violence Systems Project

Khary Bridgewater, Project Manager of YVSP was recently interviewed by Brian Corcoran, Managing Editor of the Emmanuel Research Review, for an overview and update on the work of the Youth Violence Systems Project (YVSP).

ERR: Khary, could you provide us with a brief overview and explanation of the Youth Violence Systems Project and its goals?

BRIDGEWATER: YVSP is designed to build a computer model functioning as a virtual laboratory where the user can evaluate various strategies for reducing youth violence. The model is fundamentally based on systems dynamics and systems thinking. It enables users to take individual or combined approaches or policies addressing youth violence in Boston, and run them through a simulation to gauge their effectiveness over a 12-year horizon.

BRIDGEWATER: The Project is dedicated to a community-based process, where residents—including youth —from high violence areas in the city of Boston convene together over the course of a few months. In the end, they design the model themselves according to first-hand experience living in the community.

ERR: You’ve mentioned that YVSP is based on ‘systems dynamics’ and ‘systems thinking’, can you say more about a systemic approach in addressing complex issues like youth violence?

BRIDGEWATER: Long before YVSP, a lot of work had already been done to assess various factors associated with urban youth violence. As far as we could tell, people attempt to address the issue of youth violence by engaging only a small portion of the problem based on their experience or their field of expertise. But, youth violence is a complex issue with multiple factors that must be collectively considered versus individually to have a significant impact on the problem.

From the beginning, YVSP Steering Committee acknowledged the importance of building understanding before taking any action within our focus communities. So much valuable information is currently scattered in institutional and professional silos and, therefore, limited because it is not holistically contextualized. Systems thinking drives what YVSP does and how we do it. It’s important for us to help build bridges of communication between these silos, and draw out key insights from the communities most intimate with the problem of youth violence in Boston. We have to understand the larger system at work to be able to identify where the highest leverage points are.

We’ve spent significant time gathering and compiling demographic and historical data; inventorying all the agencies, churches, and schools that are already doing work in our focus neighborhoods; and identifying possible trends in the city. The team’s approach looks at the bigger process, the system dynamics, and brings together the disparate work from many different fields through a holistic lens.

ERR: Given the scope and diversity of this type of systemic consideration, how did you as the Project Manager of YVSP begin to facilitate or manage this project?

BRIDGEWATER: Early on, we decided to adopt a “phased approach.” If the project was tackled all at once, we would soon find ourselves in trouble due to the incredible complexity of the matter. So, we decided to work with the model builder and focus on only one Boston neighborhood in the first phase of the Project.

ERR: Could you tell us more about the various phases, process, and thinking behind them?

BRIDGEWATER: Phase 1 involved extensive research and dozens of meetings with academicians and community groups.

In Phase 2, we picked one area in Boston—Uphams Corner—and partnered with three community agencies that became the Design Team. Each of the agencies contributed four people to the 12-person team, including two youth and two adults—one agency staff and a community resident. The Design Team met for several weeks to learn about the data that was gathered in Phase 1, and come up with a working model demonstrating how youth violence was operating in their community.

At the end of the second phase in March of 2009, we produced a prototype and had a new tool to frame the youth violence conversation. It was very exciting because real progress was being made.

ERR: Perhaps we could share your Neighborhood Briefing Document on Uphams Corner in a future ERR? So much of the information that your team has compiled can serve the community and church broadly in so many ways beyond youth violence. Can you tell us about what comes next in the project?

BRIDGEWATER: Phase 3 is well underway, and we expanded into two additional neighborhoods: Bowdoin/Geneva and Grove Hall. In December 2009—the end of Phase 3—we plan to have a fully developed model with all the data sets and information loaded.

ERR: After gathering all this data and working with the community to understand and interrelate the data to develop the model, how will the model be used by the community?

BRIDGEWATER: Phase 4 is a two year implementation stage of the Project. We will teach a number of different groups to use the model. It will involve training several community-based agencies—including 200 youth workers—on the principles of the model, as well as how to plug in their own intervention strategies to evaluate their work.

ERR: In addition to the community agencies and youth workers, how do you see YVSP specifically helping pastors and church youth ministers working in Boston’s high violence neighborhoods?

BRIDGEWATER: In January, we will be launching our website that, for one, has detailed neighborhood information for pastors to learn more about the communities they serve. Second, the website will host forums where pastors can read about the thoughts, opinions and needs in the words of the youth and community residents themselves. As I mentioned before, we will also begin trainings—tentatively in January 2010—that pastors and youth ministers can attend to learn more about youth violence and strategies to implement in the field.

ERR: If we look beyond all the research, reports, computer modeling, and community process, that your team has been working so hard at, what do you hope to see happen in Boston?

BRIDGEWATER: Ultimately, the goal is to reduce youth violence and stop kids from dying in the streets of Boston. We’re trying to reduce violence among young people between the ages of 12 to 24, and bring about a safer, healthier city for everyone. Young people are profoundly affected by the problem and, as such, need to be part of the solution.

ERR: Khary thanks for the introduction, overview and update on YVSP and we look forward to hearing more from you and your team in the future.

KHARY BRIDGEWATER, YVSP Project Manager
Director, Applied Evaluation Systems, the consulting enterprise of Emmanuel Gospel Center

Khary Bridgewater Khary's work experience includes serving as Executive Director of Bruce Wall Ministries, an organization that provides programs and services to children and youth, former interim director of neXus Boston, Co-Director of TechMission’s AmeriCorps program, and Director of Development of Black Campus Ministries in New England. Additionally, Khary has worked as an entrepreneur, school teacher, and in business and community organizations. He studied Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Khary is also a licensed minister at New Hope Church in Framingham, MA. He is married to his wife Jennifer and is the proud father of his newborn baby girl, Grace Ann.

The goal of the Youth Violence Systems Project is to create a system dynamics model of youth violence in Boston which reflects reality, has predictive and analytical value, and incorporates input and feedback from community stakeholders. In other words, this computer model will help community, academic, political, and institutional stakeholders develop more effective strategies to reduce youth violence.

One of the guiding principles of the Project is to improve the quality of life of every Boston resident, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic class or any other defining characteristic. By increasing our understanding of the system dynamics of youth violence in Boston—including plausible outcomes for different actions taken—we will have stronger communication, agreement and cooperation around a community-wide response to youth violence in Boston.

Designed by neighborhood youth, residents, and community-based agency representatives, the YVSP computer model reflects the best current thinking about youth violence in Boston from a multi-dimensional perspective. The overarching goal is to understand the systemic structure that drives youth violence and identify action points that will improve the situation in high-violence neighborhoods.

Looking at the issue of youth violence by neighborhoods is very important. Obviously, not every neighborhood in Boston is a high-violence neighborhood. Therefore, there must be something structural in some neighborhoods that produces higher youth violence. The Project will help understand relationships so we can address youth violence in those neighborhoods as a system issue rather than an ad-hoc system.

The Youth Violence Systems Project brought together disparate groups of interested parties and actors, including people on the front lines of youth violence prevention, researchers, and victims or perpetrators of violence together. They hope to develop a common language to allow these previously isolated groups to discuss approaches that reduce youth violence in the long run.

The Project will model the violent behavior of youth in Boston. Data from four Boston neighborhoods that have high levels of youth violence will be evaluated and incorporated into the computer model. Research and data from the medical, education, criminal justice, economic, and youth development fields also will be incorporated. The model will run simulations; illuminate key actionable leverage points which show clear entry points for engaging and acting upon the system; and show the plausible outcomes of those actions.

The Project will involve a phased, iterative development process that will take two years to complete. Each subsequent phase will incorporate a deepening understanding of the system dynamics and will reflect increasing model complexity and stakeholder input. A functional system model will be developed and demonstrated in Phase 2, and will be enhanced (based on community input) and demonstrated in Phases 3 and 4.

This phased approach permits us to receive input, build a portion of the model, test the model and improve it based on what we've learned, and then receive more input so we can build more of the model. Simulation results will be compared to available source data as well as qualitative assessment by youth work professionals to sharpen the accuracy of the model in reflecting reality and strengthening its viability for scenario planning.

Community involvement is integral to the success of building a viable simulation model. We will use the relational contacts of the Boston Capacity Tank, the High Risk Youth Network, and other partners and community consultants (some of whom will be paid for their involvement) to engage key community leaders, important neighborhood organizations, youth workers, families, gang members and other youth in the four neighborhoods selected to be studied.

Designers will convene neighborhood learning teams, talk individually with community leaders, hold meetings with neighborhood groups, conduct facilitated listening sessions with key stakeholder groups, and present the simulation model at community meetings in the three target neighborhoods. They also will capture the "lost voices" in these high-violence neighborhoods—the youth who act violently, the victims of youth violence, and incarcerated youth. At the conclusion of our project, researchers will hold two forums for the broader community to recommend action steps and responses based on the model findings.

The Youth Violence Systems Project advisors include: Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, associate dean and professor at Harvard School of Public Health, Rev. Jeffrey Brown, Executive Director Boston TenPoint Coalition, and Rev. Ray Hammond, Chairman, of Boston TenPoint Coalition), and Dean Borgman, youth work professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. For more info visit www.gettingtotheroots.org.

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Emmanuel Research Review

In this issue: The Youth Violence Systems Project A community process, computer simulator, and systems thinking are engaged to better understand the dynamics of youth violence in Boston

The Youth Violence Systems Project

In this issue: The Youth Violence Systems Project
A community process, computer simulator, and systems thinking are engaged to better understand the dynamics of youth violence in Boston