YATW Blog #3 Agent of Change Teen Violence

Hey everyone, it’s Devia again! If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts on youth violence, you should know that I’ve been researching on youth violence. For my first blog, I mostly wrote about what my topic was and why it was important to me. Also, it spoke of what caused the majority of youth violence and teenagers’ participation in violent behavior. For my first blog post, click here. My second blog contained information on my piece of original research. For that, I conducted a survey marketed towards teenagers in questions that could help the reader and myself better understand what goes through the average youth’s mind. To access my second blog post, you can click this link.

This blog is the final piece of my English class’ “You and The World” project. To conclude the segment, we had one last mission; become an Agent of Change. To become this ”Agent of Change” it was our sole duty to not only research and write about our important topic, but to help to better our issue. This is just us getting involved in our topic, trying to be of service in any way we can, any way that we can think of. For my Agent of Change part of the project, I chose to spread the word. Even though this blog is helping get the word about youth violence, it still isn’t enough. I needed to do something else, something greater than just this blog to spread the word. Around my neighborhood, I’ve been posting up papers and posters that support anti violence in youth. I’ve also spoke with my peers at my church on this topic.

I know it isn’t much, but it’s more than what somebody else didn’t do. By putting up posters and flyers, the word to help subdue youth violence will disseminate. First, through my neighborhood, then the city and from there, there’s no telling what could happen afterwards. There’s no telling how far my anti violence campaign will go. With that, the additional piece of my Agent of Change work was with my church group, where I briefly spoke on my You and The World project and youth violence itself. I hope that it was good enough to subordinate anyone that I spoke to to partake in youth aggression. Furthermore, I hope that the people I spoke with can follow in my footsteps to help spread an anti violence campaign in youth. I’m fraught with satisfaction based on what I’ve been doing. I feel as though everything that I do is serving a helping hand in detaching violence and aggression from teenagers.    

Other things are also being done to discontinue teenage violence as well. Various organizations and clubs have programs that help prevent youth violence as well. For example, the city of Philadelphia has conducted a project, located as a pdf here, designed to become a bulwark, stopping violent behavior from reaching youth beforehand. The plan is a multiple step project whose focal points are broken down into the categories of Education, Training and Employment, Meaningful Engagement, Health, Detention and Diversion and a Safe Environment. The city’s main idea is that by doing things to prepare them for the future, distract them from violence, and help promote safety, youth would more likely be prone to a nonviolent behavior. Furthermore, there are an array of clubs and programs that teens can join that influence a stray from violent behavior. One of those organizations being PAAN, the Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network, which strives to help reduce the violence in youth.

Even though I did a lot of work, I still wish that some things were to be done differently. If I could change anything about my project, I would change how much I worked as an Agent of Change. I think that I could have done more to promote my issue to others. I could have scheduled more opportunities to speak about my topic to others and maybe helped out in an organization as a volunteer. Everything is okay though because I still think that no matter how much I didn’t do, I did enough.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone who helped me while I was trying to do this project. I would like to thank my teacher, Mrs. Dunn, and my student teacher, Ms. Lucy, for assisting me and answering any questions I had about the project. I would also like to thank my old teacher, Mr. Crain for helping me to get more people interested in my issue. I would also like to thank everyone who’ve read my blogs and been keeping track of my issue.

Thank you!