2004 Campus-Community Partnerships

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Research Experience for Gang Impacted Youth

Abstract:

In conjunction with Father Greg Boyle's Jobs For a Future program, we propose to continue building and developing our program of educational and mentoring intervention with gang impacted youth from East Los Angeles. Father Boyle is a highly respected local figure in gang intervention work and his program continues to be ideal community partner for bringing UCLA-based teaching and research activities to the community. As a component of Father Boyle s program, we have worked to adapt UCLA-developed and based ethnographic training methods, which are routinely used for undergraduate and graduate training in sociology, as well as our NSF funded research experience for undergraduates to a group of young people in East Los Angeles who would otherwise not have the opportunity to engage in university-level research. This past year has allowed us to learn much about what is involved in adapting this program to the gang-intervention setting and we are encouraged by the participation of both trainees and staff. Another year of support will allow us to develop this experiment into a sustainable element of Jobs For a Future s training program. This year we propose to continue holding writing workshops at Homeboy and to train Homeboy's staff and volunteers to participate in and lead these workshops.