Solar Now Provides Twice As Many Jobs As the Coal Industry, Co.Exist
While the coal industry faces a sharp decline, solar power is growing at record levels — adding jobs at a rate 17 times faster than the overall workforce. The industry is also a more lucrative option for people without higher education. As one advocate puts it, “This is just an incredible example of the opportunities that exist for people that need these opportunities the most.”
Building Trust Cuts Violence. Cash Also Helps. The New York Times
A radical approach to gun violence has helped reduce the homicide rate by nearly 60 percent in Richmond, Calif., formerly one of the nation’s most dangerous cities. Spearheaded by DeVone Boggan, a NationSwell Council member, the program identifies those most likely to be involved in violent crimes and pays them a stipend to turn their lives around. Aside from the cash benefits, participants receive mentoring from “neighborhood change agents” who have come out of lives of crime themselves.
Iceland Knows How to Stop Teen Substance Abuse but the Rest of the World Isn’t Listening, Mosaic Science
In the last two decades, Iceland has implemented an ambitious social program that’s nearly eliminated substance abuse among teens. After research showed that young people were becoming addicted to the changes in brain chemistry brought on by drugs and alcohol, experts decided to “orchestrate a social movement around natural highs,” offering extensive after-school programs in sports, dance, music — anything that could replicate the rush of drugs. This, coupled with stricter laws and closer ties between parents and schools, led to a huge societal makeover. Proponents of the program hope to recreate it in the U.S., but funding and public opinion remain obstacles.
Continue reading “Solar Trumps Coal When It Comes to Jobs, Cash Handouts Deter Crime in California and More”
Tag: Violence Prevention
What Can Former Gang Members Teach Psychology Students?
On the first day of class, gunshots alarmingly rang out in the hallway of the Professional Community Intervention Training Institute (PCITI) in Los Angeles, where former gang members sit alongside grad students working toward their doctorates in psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
Executive director Aquil Basheer soon arrived to tell the students that he had fired harmless blanks as an experiential learning technique to get the students to pay attention to their own reactions and those of others in the face of violence.
Why the seemingly extreme teaching method? It’s a way to make violence prevention lessons more authentic and more helpful in case the soon-to-be-doctors some day find themselves in truly dangerous situations.
Basheer knows what he’s talking about. After all, he was once a gang member himself. After leaving the criminal lifestyle behind, he began PCITI in 2002 to give firefighters, psychologists, and other professionals standard techniques to apply toward violence intervention. In the past, the people who live in violent neighborhoods usually wouldn’t talk to the psychologists who tried to launch violence prevention programs — but they’ll talk to Basheer.
Former gang members come to his classes to talk about what situations spark violence and the best ways to diffuse tensions. They teach the doctorate students how to control rumors, restrain people safely, hold candlelight vigils for victims of violence without prompting more shootings, help bystanders, and perform CPR.
The former gang member instructors even teach the students what body language is acceptable in poor communities. Nikko Deloney, one of the streetwise teachers, told Melissa Pandika of Ozy Magazine, “You need to know if you have a holier-than-thou look in a place where people are hopeless.”
Once the program participants have a basic understanding about how to intervene in or prevent violent situations, the teachers take them out on the streets of Los Angeles for tours of “hotspots.”
Deloney says one of the most important lessons is to observe and listen more than they preach. “We call it grandstanding for no one. ‘I have all the answers in my book.’ If you show up without your book and a little communication and integrity … you can actually help somebody.”
MORE: Can Peer Pressure Stop Violence Against Women?
Can Peer Pressure Stop Violence Against Women?
Who can offer support to the 25 percent of American women who experience violence or abuse during their lifetime? Perhaps the best advocates to fight against this mistreatment are the majority of men who never think of hurting a woman.
That’s the idea behind Te Invito, a new program of the National Latin@ Network that reaches out to Latino men in Spanish and English to encourage them to speak out and work for an end to violence against women. Their website offers an Engaging Men and Boys toolkit that includes resources on programs throughout the country that have been proven to work. The campaign kicked off with a video they hope will reach Latino men to introduce them to the program.
One such program is Coaching Boys Into Men, which teaches techniques to athletic coaches that engage their team members in discussions about domestic violence. The goal? Preventing teenagers from ever abusing a partner. A study by Elizabeth Miller of the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC suggested this program increased teenagers’ recognition of abusive behavior, reduced their likelihood of abusing a girlfriend, and often led them to intervene in stopping such abusive behavior in others.
“As with every other culture, there have always been Latino men who oppose violence against women,” Juan Carlos Areán, Director of the National Latin@ Network told Pierre R. Berastaín for the Huffington Post. “Te Invito is an opportunity for those men to lift their voices and make it clear that this [violence] is unacceptable behavior.”
Men and boys who have engaged in domestic violence prevention are invited to share their ideas with Te Invito so they can increase their list of resources throughout the country. The idea is if more men become aware of how many men are opposed to abuse of women, it won’t be culturally acceptable to engage in this violence. Which sounds like a pretty terrific idea to us.
MORE: We Can Save Some of America’s Most Vulnerable Women From Violence
You’ll Never Believe What This Peace-Promoting Sculpture is Made Of
Does a work of art have the ability to reduce violence in America and inspire others to work for peace? That’s the hope of students at Centaurus High School (CHS) in Lafayette, Colorado, who are collaborating on a new piece of artwork.
The 2012 Sandy Hook shooting motivated CHS students to research gun violence for their political action class. They tracked U.S. deaths due to guns after Sandy Hook to the end of 2013, tallying a total of 12,400 reported gun fatalities. Last May, in the middle of the lesson, a 16-year-old student at Centaurus attempted to detonate a pipe bomb at the school. Thankfully no one was hurt, as a teacher discovered the device and administrators evacuated the building.
The shaken-up students wanted to do something to impress upon others what they’ve learned about violence in America, so they came up with the idea of inviting a local artist to create a sculpture from melted guns. “We figured what better way to bring awareness to the issue than build a memorial for those who died where people walk by it every day and think, ‘What is this about?'” 18-year-old student Kenny Sweetnam told Elizabeth Hernandez of the Boulder Daily Camera.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office donated surrendered guns, teaching the students how to disarm them and supervising the sawing of the guns so they no longer functioned. Sculptor Jessica Adams is guiding the students as they use the melted gun metal to create a sculpture out of 12,400 rods, one for each gun victim in 2013, with longer rods for younger victims, symbolizing the length of the lives they were not able to live.
Sheila Dierks, a priest at the Light of Christ Ecumenical Catholic Church who is volunteering with the project said, “By transforming these guns into art, we’re giving less power to the gun and more to the power of change we hope to see.”
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MORE: Is Learning About Guns the Solution to Youth Violence?