Building Strong Community Leaders: Working to Prevent Youth Violence in Philadelphia through a Focus on Leadership Skills Development

Youth violence is a complex public health problem involving a myriad of individual, family, and community factors. Individuals who exhibit certain leadership characteristics such as positive social orientation, intolerance toward deviance, and a commitment to social engagement with peers experience less violence in their lives (WHO, 2002). Although many violence prevention programs focus on conflict resolution and anger management, few interventions targeting African American youth include leadership skill development. Through our work with the CDC-funded Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC), we have worked within a community-based participatory research framework to build and support youth and community leaders. Feedback from community partners suggested that the programs expand beyond conflict resolution and anger management. Consistent with the transformational view of leadership, key community partners emphasized that youth need leadership skills with specific strategies for making positive decisions on a daily basis. PCVPC researchers and community members allocated resources to develop strategies and additional tools to expand its leadership skill development efforts. Leadership-focused activities included: facilitated youth workshops, community symposia highlighting the accomplishments of youth, community mobilization workshops developed by youth, hiring and training of youth community outreach workers and interns, and a violence prevention photo/drawing contest. Empowering youth from the community to take on leadership opportunities may assist in sustaining collaborative efforts to build strong community-based aggression prevention programs. In addition, by training youth to become future leaders, they will be able take a more active role in their community which may prove an effective way to prevent violence.