4th Annual Youth Violence Prevention Forum

Injury Free Coalition for Kids

Date: Fri, Oct 18, 2002
Time: 8am-2:30pm

Location: Banning's Landing Community Center, Wilmington CA
Organizer/Sponsor: Harbor-UCLA/REI Childhood Injury Prevention Center

At the time of the Youth Forum’s inception in 1998, the city of Carson had experienced unusually high rates of emergency room visits by children and adolescents. These emergency room visits were often diagnosed as either unintentional injuries, such as a fall, or intentional injuries such as an act of violence. Many of these intentional injuries were the result of school violence including gang violence, dating violence, cultural or racial tensions, and bullying. In response, the community developed and implemented the Youth Forum on Violence Prevention. The Youth Forum on Violence Prevention is an annual event that aims to help reduce violence in schools. The goal of the event is to provide students an opportunity to improve their communication skills when dealing with conflict and violence. For the past four years, the Childhood Injury Prevention Center has helped to facilitate the one-day event in the cities of Carson and Wilmington. The event employs an interactive format to engage adolescents in dialogue about school violence. Questions used in the breakout sessions are designed so that students will be able to use critical thinking skills to assess violence-related problems. Four years have passed since the first Youth Forum and the success of the event can be directly related to two factors. First, the enthusiastic support and participation of community stakeholders whose earnest commitment brought the event to fruition each year, and secondly the increased number of children served at each event and their valuable participation in this experience.

Contact Information

Teri Gray, MPH
310-222-2331
tgray@rei.edu