TCWF Conference on Violence Prevention Conference sessions will provide opportunities to discuss critical issues and strategies on violence prevention, gang intervention and re-entry.
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8 a.m. Registration and Breakfast
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9 a.m. TCWF Conference on Violence Prevention
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4 p.m. Adjourn
DETAILED AGENDA
Wednesday, December 12
12 p.m.
Registration Desk Open
5:30 p.m.
Welcome Reception
6:30 p.m.
Dinner and Presentation of the California Peace Prize
The California Wellness Foundation is proud to present its 2012 California Peace Prize honorees. Each receives a cash award of $25,000 as an acknowledgment of their commitment to prevent violence and promote peace in their communities.
Elder Michael Cummings
Elder Michael Cummings, also known as “Big Mike,” is a violence prevention specialist who uses his leadership skills, personal history and deep roots in the community to create safe streets for youth and opportunities for families in Watts, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. Together with his wife, Sauna, Cummings founded We Care Outreach Ministries, a nonprofit organization working to improve the quality of life for residents, restore hope and strengthen families. He has been honored by President Barack Obama’s Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative and was named an Ambassador of Peace by California State Senator Roderick Wright.
Kevin Grant
For more than two decades, Kevin Grant has worked to help youth and adults involved in the juvenile justice system and individuals living in Oakland’s most impoverished neighborhoods find alternatives to violence and crime and live healthier lives. Grant is a renowned expert in street outreach, violence mediation and the development of re-entry programs. Grant was honored as a Hometown Hero by Comcast and the Bay Area News Group in 2010 and received the Oakland Citizen Humanitarian Award in 2009.
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Su Yon Park, Psy.D.
The late Dr. Su Yon Park was a licensed psychologist and clinical coordinator at Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland (CHRCO), where she helped create a mental health clinic on the campus of Youth UpRising. Working with youth living in a community plagued by poverty, violence and high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, she helped to normalize mental health by systematically making it more accessible. Diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Park passed away on September 20, 2012. On October 12, hundreds of community members, regional, statewide and federal representatives gathered to celebrate her life and recognize Dr. Park’s work.
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Thursday, December 13
8 a.m.
Registration and Breakfast
9 a.m.
Welcome
Diana M. Bontá
President and CEO
The California Wellness Foundation
Julio Marcial
Program Director
The California Wellness Foundation
Opening Plenary
Breaking the Cycle of Violence: Education is the Answer
Instead of more talk about the significance of school, this panel will offer the real world of six young people who have made the journey from incarceration to education. These youth will describe how they demanded access to the world of education while they were locked up. Their lives — and the profound impact of the Reintegration Academy in the Inland Empire and Ventura — will be brought to light in this discussion.
Moderator:
Renford Reese
Professor
California Polytechnic University, Pomona
Panelists:
James Anderson
Executive Administrator
Anti-Recidivism Coalition
Anthony Alfaro
Student
Loyola Marymount University
Dominque Bell
Student
Loyola Marymount University
Charity Chandler
Student
Loyola Marymount University
Esche Jackson
Student
USC
Prophet Walker
Student
Loyola Marymount University / Nautilus Group INC.
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11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Session I
Concurrent Workshop I
Off the GRYD: Ending Gang Violence Through Community Resiliency and Youth Development
This session will explore how the city of Los Angeles implemented the Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) model throughout areas of Los Angeles most impacted by gang-related violence. These efforts include: the Summer Night Lights program, the Multi Generational Family Gang Prevention Program, and the Gang Intervention Incident Response and Case Management Program.
Moderator:
Guillermo Cespedes
Deputy Mayor
City of Los Angeles
Panelists:
Robert Arias
President
Communities In Schools
Alicia K. Avalos
Director - Summer Night Lights Program
Gang Reduction and Youth Development- GRYD
Melvyn Hayward
Executive Director
V2K-H.E.L.P.E.R. Foundation
Patrick Gannon
Airport Police Chief
Los Angeles Airport Police
Chris Trujillo
Youth & Family Counselor
El Nido Family Centers
Concurrent Workshop II
Serving Survivors: Girls, Trauma and Delinquency
Panelists will share the latest research and recommendations for meeting the needs of girls who have experienced, or have been exposed to, trauma in their lives. They will discuss how the large number of girls in the juvenile justice system and the high rates of exposure to violence among these girls pose significant challenges and obligations for juvenile justice facilities and programs. Panelists will also discuss how research and experience highlight the links among trauma, the lack of appropriate treatment, and the behaviors that lead to girls' involvement in the justice system.
Moderator:
Angela Wolf
Associate Director of Research
National Council on Crime & Delinquency
Panelists:
Shi Cota
Counselor
Second Chance
Monique W. Morris
CEO
MWM Consulting Group, LLC
Concurrent Workshop III
Ensuring Public Safety Through Successful Juvenile Re-Entry
With more responsibility for juvenile justice being shifted from the state to the counties, local jurisdictions are accountable for the vast majority of the juvenile justice system in California. This panel will explore juvenile re-entry programs in three major counties in the state: Los Angeles, San Francisco and Alameda (Oakland). The panel will include practitioners who run successful re-entry programs and provide information on local government funding for services for youth in the juvenile justice system. Topics discussed will include: effective re-entry practices, conducting programs inside juvenile facilities, government funding for youth services, and needed policy shifts in juvenile justice.
Moderator:
David Muhammad
CEO
Solutions, Inc.
Panelists:
Achebe Hoskins
Director of Youth Programs
The Mentoring Center
Kimo Uila
Director of Juvenile Justice Services
Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
Fernando Montes-Rodriguez
Program Director
New Visions Foundation
Concurrent Workshop IV
Youth Voices: A Valuable Resource to Inform System Reform
Across California, justice-involved youth are helping to promote and shape reforms in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. The “voices of youth” and their contributions as essential stakeholders are resources that many cities and counties have learned can be vital to effective detention reform. Yet the practical challenges of meaningfully engaging youth — administration, resource allocation, the “right adults” and responsive activities — require thoughtful approaches to increase system personnel’s exposure to, and embrace of, youths’ perspectives. This workshop will be an opportunity to engage and learn from formerly incarcerated youth about their experiences, the services they received and the systems they have been involved with.
Moderator:
Jimmy Wu
Case Manager
InsideOUT Writers
Panelists:
Quiyona Bridges
InsideOUT Writers
Juan Gomez
InsideOUT Writers
Edwin Moran
InsideOUT Writers
Lucias Bouge
InsideOUT Writers
Alton Pitre
InsideOUT Writers
Concurrent Workshop V - “TEDTalk” Track
Each TEDTalk-style session provides participants with an opportunity to hear one speaker’s perspective on a particular issue and discuss the issue with the speaker in a short-format, interactive session. Each talk is 25 minutes long, which includes a 15-minute presentation with 10 minutes of Q&A.
Restorative & Equitable Justice: A New Vision of Public Safety
Our current administration of justice is expensive, wasteful and dysfunctional. This talk will discuss policies to establish community norms that are reflective of values we encourage as well as an approach to violations of those values in a way that changes behaviors and keep us safe.
James Bell
Executive Director
W. Hayward Burns Institute
What the Numbers Don't Tell Us: The Strengths of Violence Prevention
This talk will offer a window into the frustrations and beauty of working as a community-based evaluator and how I often struggle to balance the demands of scientific methods with the mission of using research to truly help people. I will share personal experiences in the research field and then offer a "manifesto of strengths-based evaluation" that truly assesses the strengths of individuals and agencies working in the world of violence prevention.
Jorja Leap
Professor
UCLA, School of Public Affairs
Change(Makers) at the Philanthropic Intersection: Focusing on Leadership, Knowledge, Convening and Change Making
It’s important that we always have an eye and ear to what people are really facing in their lives and how philanthropy is a catalyst to making real change from a perspective of people and place. We are about “ground truth,” which means we really need to know, beyond theories of change and data, what the community is and how it is moving forward on issues such as education, jobs, violence reduction and disparities in health care. We in philanthropy are looking from the top down and seeking a return on our investments through evaluation and data collection. How does the community value the return on our investments in helping to move their lives, issues and policies forward? Tell me the stories of “return on community” – it’s more anecdotal and personal than reporting. Simply put, the challenge is: How do we really know if what we are doing is working unless there’s a grassroots and “grasstops” approach to philanthropy with the work, people and community at the center?
Robert Lewis, Jr.
Vice President for Program
The Boston Foundation
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12:30 p.m.
Networking Lunch
Keynote Address
Michael Tubbs
Council Member-Elect
Stockton City Council, District 6
Michael Tubbs, council member-elect for the city of Stockton, is the youngest city council member in the city’s history and one of the youngest elected officials in the country. He has garnered national headlines for being one of only three politicians to receive a donation from Oprah Winfrey, after Mayor Cory Booker of Newark and President Barack Obama. He recently won election in the council district he grew up in, earning more than 60 percent of the citywide vote. Tubbs graduated from Stanford University, earning his bachelor’s degree with honors at the same time as he earned his master’s degree with the highest university distinction – the Dinkelspiel award.
Tubbs currently serves as the founder of The Phoenix Scholars and cofounder of the Summer Success and Leadership Academy at the University of the Pacific. He has lived and worked with marginalized communities in Capetown and El Salvador in addition to interning in the White House and at Google. He has served as a voting member of Stanford University’s Board of Trustees’ development committee and has worked with the Children’s Defense Fund on its campaign to stop the “cradle-to-prison” pipeline.
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2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Session II
Concurrent Workshop I
Caught in the Crossfire: How California’s Hospitals and Service Providers Can Partner Together To Interrupt the Cycle of Violence
In 2009, there were more than 13,000 nonfatal and 2,000 fatal hospitalizations for gunshots, stabbings and assaults in California. Without intervention, hospitals discharge violently injured patients to the same violent environments where they were injured, without a prescription for how to stay safe and with community pressure to seek revenge. Too often, this results in a revolving door of violence, causing even more injuries, arrests, incarcerations and, sadly, deaths. Without intervention, 44 percent of young people who are injured end up getting shot or stabbed again, and as many as 20 percent end up dying from violence. Intervention at the hospital is a unique opportunity — a “golden moment” to break the cycle of violence by preventing retaliation, reinjury and rearrest. The National Network of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs (www.nnhvip.org) supports hospitals and service providers across the country in following its best-practice model. This session will describe the best practices of hospital-based violence intervention programs, explain their measured effectiveness in reducing violence, and examine data about why there are not enough hospital-based programs to effectively intervene with violently injured patients in California.
Moderator:
Ann Marks
Executive Director
Youth Alive
Panelists:
Tony Zepeda
Director of Programs
Soledad Enrichment Action
Paul Carrillo
Injury Prevention Coordinator
St. Francis Medical Center, Trauma Services
Concurrent Workshop II
Juvenile Justice Reform in Action
Everyone — policymakers, practitioners, advocates — agrees that our juvenile justice system is in need of reform. This is particularly true of the institutional and prison-like facilities that many California youth are incarcerated in far from their homes. Youth development research has been clear that these prison-like facilities are ineffective and even harmful to adolescent development. A different approach is needed. Recently, the "Missouri Model" has received much attention as a positive direction based on a different philosophy around young people. What is the Missouri Model and how does it work? This panel will delve into the basic tenants of this type of approach, why and how it works, challenges in implementing it, and what it can look like “on the ground” in different jurisdictions, including Santa Clara, CA. There will be an open and lively exchange about this model and how it might be used throughout California to better the lives of system-involved youth and direct them to a path toward college and career, not prison.
Moderator:
Julio Marcial
Program Director
The California Wellness Foundation
Panelists:
Sheila Mitchell
Chief Probation Officer
Santa Clara County, Probation Department
Pili Robinson
Director of Consulting\
Missouri Youth Services Institute
Mark Steward
Director
Missouri Youth Services Institute
Concurrent Workshop III
Community Responses to Realignment: Building Community Safety in a Time of Change in California's Justice System
As a result of the Public Safety Realignment of 2011 (AB 109), increasing numbers of Californians convicted of nonserious offenses are being sentenced to county jail terms or placed on county supervision rather than being sent to state prisons. Across California's 58 counties, communities are wrestling with how to implement realignment in ways that will increase public safety, reduce costs and avoid replicating the broken prison system at the county level. The shift to local responsibility presents a new landscape and new opportunities for organizations that work with communities that are most impacted by crime and by the criminal justice system. This panel of community experts in public safety, health, housing and education discusses what Public Safety Realignment means for strengthening programs that are proven to work to prevent violence and to close the system's revolving door.
Moderator:
Lenore Anderson
Director
Californians for Safety and Justice
Panelists:
Teresa Alcaraz
Lead Case Manager
El Concilio Council for the spanish speaking
Marqueece Harris-Dawson
CEO
Community Coalition
Adam Kruggel
Executive Director
CCISCO: Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization
Aqeela Sherrills
Director
RHD California
Concurrent Workshop IV - “TEDTalk” Track
Each TEDTalk-style session provides participants with an opportunity to hear one speaker’s perspective on a particular issue and discuss the issue with the speaker in a short-format, interactive session. Each talk is 25 minutes long, which includes a 15-minute presentation with 10 minutes of Q&A.
TBA TEDTalk
TBD Description
Ending the Incarceration of Girls: How Improved Access to Physical and Mental Health Care Can Improve Health and Decrease Crime and Violence in California
In this talk,Leslie Acoca will draw on her research and more than 3500 interviews with incarcerated juveniles to provide compelling stories and original data on the trends leading teenage girls to become the fastest growing segment of the juvenile and criminal justice systems in America. She will also demonstrate that detained teenage girls make up one of the most medically invisible and neglected justice-involved populations. Finally, Acoca will describe a current project, the Girls Health Screen, which seeks to heal this health gap for vulnerable girls by helping systems to identify, treat and follow their medical and psychological needs in institutions and in their communities.
Leslie Acoca
President
National Girls Health and Justice Institute
What If There Was a Better Way Than "Prevention"?
For decades, conventional wisdom has suggested that prevention, intervention and suppression are the three most effective strategies for decreasing gang violence. But what if there was a better way? How would such a new framework function? And would current key stakeholders be open and willing to implement a new model that might fundamentally change how they do business? Christopher Yanov, the founder of Reality Changers who turned just $300 of seed money into millions of dollars in scholarships for inner-city youth, will provocatively explore a new paradigm shift. As Yanov likes to say, "If we don't want our kids to have anything to do with gang violence, then shouldn't the answer have nothing to do with gangs or violence?"
Christoper Yanov
Founder and President
Reality Changers
