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Project SANKOFA:
A Violence Prevention and Risk Reduction Program for Urban Teen
Youth violence is a fast growing problem which threatens the lives and well-being of children,
adolescents, and adults across our nation without regard to socioeconomic status, ethnicity or
race. In terms of injury-related deaths, homicide now stands as the second leading cause of
mortality among all children and adolescents in the United States; African American and Latino
youths face even greater risk for becoming victims of violence, According to 1992 data from the
National Center for Health Statistics, homicide was the leading cause for death for both male and
female African Americans, aged 15-34., for all years between 1978 and 1988; the rates for Latinos
are only slightly lower,
The recognition of youth valance as a public health issue fi-an)es it as a problem that can be
prevented rather than one that should be relegated to the legal system alone. Assuming that youth
and their families cannot achieve optimal emotional well-being in the face of continuous threats to
their physical safety, a comprehensive, holistic approach to youth violence prevention is required
to achieve maximum outcomes. There is also a need to direct greater attention to the design and
evaluation of culturally specific interventions given the disproportionate number of minority youth
affected by the problem and the interrelationship between beliefs, values, motivation, and culture.
Many organizations have the interest and infrastructure to support population-based violence prevention interventions but lack the resources to effectively design, select or evaluate theoretically sound interventions/programs. SANKOFA, an ongoing collaborative. violence prevention initiative between an academic health institution, schools, a detention facility, and community-based organizations, was developed in response to the need for a culturally sensitive intervention. SANKOFA provides three levels of intervention., 1) adolescent training, 2) parent training, and 3) staff training. The intensive youth and parent training curricula were field tested twice at community agencies, and a detention center prior to implementation. The project involves a quasi-experimental comparison of adolescents who have volunteered to take part, III the SANKOFA project to a nonintervention group who are pre- and post-tested at comparable time intervals. Participants who take pail in the intervention are involved in a combination of didactic lessons, experiential exercises, group discussions, videotape, role playing, modeling, behavioral rehearsal and group tasks. Outcome data based on. the ongoing study demonstrate that the project is having a significant impact on the lives of tile participants. Participation in SANKOFA effectively decreased youths' intentions to fight: the youths' ability to cope with peer influence. Situations provoking physical aggression also yielded results of positive significance.
The videos, experiential exercises,, and visuals involved in the structured curriculum for youth and parents have been organized into a highly structured, self-instructional training manual to facilitate replication,