Vanderbilt Professors and will lead a new study this fall examining Black youth鈥檚 contributions to launching , one of a few city government-initiatives in the United States established to take an evidence-based approach to community safety and reduce youth interactions with the criminal justice system. Supported by a $75,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation, the researchers will investigate how Black youth engage in helping to coordinate, launch, and evaluate the new office in its first year of operation.
鈥淲e plan to document how Black youth-engaged political advocacy functions to imagine innovative co-governance approaches that produce scalable interventions to youth safety and violence prevention,鈥� said Warren, associate professor of leadership, policy and organizations and the study鈥檚 principal investigator. 鈥淭his project extends groundbreaking research I鈥檝e conducted through that elevates youth voices to imagine and develop scalable policy solutions and measures of well-being for Black children.鈥�
According to Warren, Nashville鈥檚 Office of Youth Safety has the potential to disrupt violent interactions with law enforcement and the 鈥渟chool-to-prison nexus鈥� by shifting structural reforms towards community-based models of youth safety.
Mehari, assistant professor of psychology and human development and a community-based researcher who studies youth violence prevention, added, 鈥淣ashville has the opportunity to serve as a model for other cities that want to collaborate with youth on preventing youth violence. This innovative approach embodies the value of 鈥榥othing about us without us鈥� and has the potential to save lives.鈥�
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)
Grounded in youth participatory action research (YPAR), the project will invite young people into the scholarly inquiry process by partnering with them as 鈥測outh co-researchers.鈥� They will collaborate with Warren鈥檚 team to generate research questions that explore problems of personal significance relevant to work being undertaken by the Office of Youth Safety, such as overexposure to violence.
Youth participants, ages 14 to 25, will be members of a internship program that prepares young people to lobby state and city governments on human rights issues. The Southern Movement Committee rallied youth interns and a grassroots movement of Black Nashvillians to advocate for funding to establish the Office of Youth Safety through their initiative.
In preparation for the formal launch of the office this summer, Black youth will be involved in Warren鈥檚 pilot study examining the process of navigating bureaucratic city government. They will analyze data and disseminate findings to leaders of the Southern Movement Committee and the Office of Youth Safety, municipal partners and other community members. Themes that emerge from the pilot study will inform the parent study in the fall.
鈥淵PAR work,鈥� Warren said, 鈥渋s about empowering youth to study their social world and then to translate what they have learned into actionable recommendations that can lead to meaningful social change.鈥�
