The new star family center grant project will enhance and expand their youth violence prevention program with the middle school students in the hawthorne school district

The New Star Family Center was awarded a $978,144 Cooperative Agreement from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (CFDA 16.839 - STOP School Violence Program) to enhance and expand their youth violence prevention program with middle school students in the Hawthorne School District. The project aims to improve school climate and safety by implementing a trauma-informed, multi-disciplinary approach focused on three core components: educating youth about healthy relationships, resolving conflicts through mediation, and engaging parents and community members. Key program activities include social-emotional learning presentations, school-wide prevention clubs, conflict resolution mediation, and parenting cafes. The expected outcomes are to develop a comprehensive prevention program that will significantly reduce violence among students while fostering positive relationship skills through a collaborative effort involving students, parents, school officials, and the community.

The purpose is to improve school climate and safety by building upon the agency's existing efforts to prevent and reduce incidents of school violence through the use of a trauma-informed, multi-disciplinary approach. The program focuses on three core components: educating youth about healthy relationships, resolving conflicts through mediation, and engaging parents and community members in the student's development. Program activities include: social emotional learning classroom presentations, school-wide prevention clubs, girl talk and GUY talk clubs for at-risk youth, conflict resolution through mediations, and parenting cafes for parents' voices. The expected outcomes are to develop a comprehensive and integrated prevention program for the school district that will significantly reduce violence among students, while fostering positive relationships skills. This will be achieved through a collaborative effort involving students, parents, school officials, and the community, working together to identify risk factors and discover innovative strategies to reduce school violence.