Building community collaboration for school safety

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) proposes to implement the FY 2023 Enhancing School Capacity to Address Youth Violence - Training and Technical Assistance program. This program will support the development and expansion of strategies that increase school safety by preventing and reducing school violence; and efforts to address youth hate crimes using OJJDP’s Preventing Youth Hate Crime curriculum for up to 45 schools and communities across the country. Project activities include developing a school safety strategic plan that is informed by available local data and existing plans, identifying a service network of community-based organizations (CBOs) that have experience operating violence prevention and early intervention programs with youth and families, and developing program strategies that provide the target youth population with service “backpacks” individualized to the particular student and engage the family as a critical change agent for the student. Expected outcomes include documented school safety strategic plans, formalized relationships between funded sites and CBOs, and administering customized service backpacks to youth and their families. Anticipated subrecipient activities include, but are not limited to, implementation of behavioral intervention programs, community and family engagement activities, conflict resolution, mentoring, restorative practices, social and emotional learning, and violence intervention and prevention programming.