HealthyCal.org

By Helen Afrasiabi

Food stamp recipients shouldn’t be relegated to a limited selection of nutrient-poor foods. That idea is the cornerstone of a recent project designed to improve the health of Santa Ana adults and schoolchildren.

The Network for a Healthy California — a partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture, California Department of Public Health and Orange County — is geared towards cultivating long-term lifestyle changes in the low-income population.

This includes Cal Fresh recipients, people who get help from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), in hopes that it may address the special needs that are present among this group.

Today’s environment challenges efforts to promote an active and healthy lifestyle, said Maridet Ibanez, Administrative Manager at the Orange County Health Care Agency. School aged children need education that will allow them to make healthy choices despite this environment, Ibanez said.

About 21 percent of Orange County’s between ages 5 and 20 were considered obese, according to 2009 Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance data from the California Department of Public Health. Nearly 17 percent of the county’s children aged 2 to 5 also fell into that category.

The Network tackles the problem by way of community and school-based educational initiatives as well as working around the community to ensure continuity. Currently students and their parents at over 30 district schools are participating in the program. Ibanez and the staff at the Orange County Health Department, including registered dieticians, put on community health fairs and work to spread their message in the media. The U.S.D.A. gives the county and school district fifty cents for every dollar of their own they put towards programs they conduct under a scope of work approved by the U.S.D.A.

“The delivered product is information on how to make healthy decisions by promoting three messages: improved consumption of fruits and vegetables, increasing daily physical activity and improving access to healthy foods for this population,” Ibanez said.

The problem, Ibanez says, is multi-faceted. While some of the issues surrounding food choices are cultural, awareness is also a barrier.

“They’re not aware they’re not healthy,” Ibanez said. “I was at a [health] screening, and some don’t know their numbers put them at risk for diabetes and high blood pressure. Our intervention creates that awareness,” Ibanez said.

Jennifer Chavez, Program Coordinator for Network within the Santa Ana Unified School District, said that parents are motivated to change their choices once they see what’s at stake.

”Parents want to provide healthy items to their children and once they have learned what healthy means, they make the necessary changes,” Chavez said.

The Network is broken down into a number of structured regional projects, including the Harvest of the Month program- where a chosen produce item is incorporated into a variety of lesson types to encourage students to change the choices they make about what they eat. This includes educating students about school gardens, shopping at farmers’ markets and community gardens for those in low-income areas.

Network also illustrates the possibility of improving upon existing programs. A key challenge for Cal Fresh recipients Network is knowing how to stretch those limited dollars further – but in the right direction. Purchasing less expensive carbohydrates and sugar-enhanced products have traditionally been the way these families get more for their money.

“Before they just got the check,” Ibanez said. “Now we say first here is the education, then choose the food.”

Network’s comprehensive approach of outreach to not only students and parents, but also school faculty and administrators is a way of ensuring its success.

“We are educating them from many different angles, whether it’s in the classroom, at a parent meeting or at a monthly board meeting,” Chavez said. Bi-lingual health professionals help to facilitate the process, Ibanez said.

Changes to food at school are also intended to help kids make healthier choices. In keeping with a district-wide health policy, schools removed vending machines containing junk food and soda, developed new guidelines for what is served in classroom parties and added nutritious choices to the lunch menus.

Such changes have already resulted in improved health, Chavez said. Physical activity is up, she said, as in consumption of milk, fruit and water.

Jacob Notowitz examines a gold chain at Numis International Inc.

Callie Shanafelt

Changes at local pawnshops give a small glimpse into how the recession is hurting the middle class.

Despite the Hollywood image of the seedy pawnshop full of stolen goods, pawnbrokers throughout California are now catering to higher income clientele.

This change is due in part to a rising need among the long-term unemployed who need cash to pay their bills, according to Emmett Murphy, spokesperson for the California Pawnbrokers Association.

They turn to pawnbrokers to borrow against valuable items they bought during better economic times.

They go to pawnshops like Numis International Inc. in the middle-class town of Millbrae near the San Francisco International Airport.

At first glance Numis International Inc. looks like a discount jewelry store.

“I have people who come in sometimes and say, ‘do you know where the pawnshop is?’” said Jacob Notowitz, Numis store manager. “And I’ll say yes, it’s right here.”

Notowitz has seen a steady increase and change in his customers during this period of long-term unemployment.

“Five years ago they were in excellent shape, and unfortunately they’ve run into hard times, and it’s taken them a long time to run out of their savings,” Notowitz said.

At the beginning of the recession, his average customer was in their 30s or 40s. “They were out of college and had a job, they were kind of the first to be let go,” Notowitz said.

Now his average customer is in their 40s or 50s, and many have never pawned anything before. “As the economy has maintained its downturn more people are coming in with higher quality merchandise that they need to borrow against,” Notowitz said.

Gordon Winter came in to pick up his 1978 Fender Precision bass guitar that he pawned four months ago. “I ran out of money. I didn’t have the means to make it to the end of the month,” said Winter. A former musician, Winter has been unemployed for the past three years after being laid off from his job at Xerox where he worked for six years.

Notowitz’s customers aren’t just the long-term unemployed. One recent customer was a construction contractor who borrowed fifteen thousand dollars to pay his employees. During good economic times he has enough money coming in from completed jobs to pay his employees for current projects. But today business is slow, so he has to borrow the money for his payroll for six months until his client pays for the project.

Sixty percent of the customers that walk through their door come into the shop to get a pawn loan. The process is pretty simple: customers bring in an item, the shop staff appraise the value and give the customer a cash loan for a little less then the item is worth. The loan is usually for a period of four months and the customer pays about 10 percent more in loan fees and finance charges to the shop for the loan. They can extend the loan by paying the fees and agreeing to a new loan with a new set of fees.

If they do not extend or repay, the shop keeps their item and resells it. But the pawnbroker doesn’t report the default to any credit agency and it does not affect customers’ credit score. Ninety-five percent of his customers return for their items or to extend the loan, Notowitz said.

While Notowitz loans out anywhere from twenty-five dollars to five hundred thousand dollars, the average loan they make in the shop is two or three hundred dollars.

California’s unemployment rate, which stands at 12.1 percent, is one-third higher than the national unemployment rate. As state and national politicians struggle to create jobs, the pawn industry continues to grow.

While politicians talk about the difficulty of creating jobs, Notowitz hired two new employees in the past two years.

By Julia Landau

Richmond has the lowest per capita income in the Bay Area and one of the highest unemployment rates. The city is also home to one of the biggest populations of people newly released from prison in Contra Costa County.

Ex-cons already vie for services with other needy people in the city, and more ex-offenders are expected in Richmond as a new law rolls out.

Assembly Bill 109, or prison realignment, is the biggest change in the criminal justice system in decades. This legislation puts low-level felons and parole violators in county jail instead of state prison. Upwards of 90% of these “non-serious” offenders getting transferred to county jails will return to their neighborhoods within the year.

The legislation puts in sharp focus alternatives to incarceration, and the assumption that local communities have more at stake than prisons when it comes to rehabilitation.

Contra Costa County has developed a plan for realignment. But in the city of Richmond, who will take the lead in helping the formerly incarcerated?

County officials say they support local programs, but county and local figures don’t enjoy the closest communications, and the law passed in July, leaving little time for debate or lengthy public discussions about how, exactly, resources would be allocated to the cities.

The city, in turn, has taken the issue of realignment to the public and to community based organizations. Richmond residents met with Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and Police Captain Mark Gagan in October to discuss details of realignment.

Captain Gagan, a former social worker, helped to spearhead a relatively new policing strategy in Richmond, one that opens the department to collaboration with citizen groups to prevent violence.

Now, there is a vital need for programs that focus on helping formerly incarcerated residents successfully reintegrate into society, a job historically ill-suited for police, Gagan said.

“I recognize the limits of my uniform,” said Gagan. “I see this [realignment law] as a call to action for nonprofits. People who have street credentials, and people who are from the same community as people getting out, these are the people who need to reach out.”

Tamisha Walker of the Safe Return Team has just such credentials. At the meeting, she said that some outreach is already underway, but Richmond lacks a central facility to connect returning residents with the services they need.

The Safe Return Team, an arm of the nonprofit research group Pacific Institute, has experience in readjusting to city life after prison terms. This background earns them the trust of recently released parolees, who they interview to learn about what ex-prisoners most need to stay straight.

A shakeup of local reentry services is long overdue, said Walker. She said Richmond needs a transitional housing program that ties new probationers into city services.

“You have to have the right structure for people to open up and say what they need,” said Walker. “We have services here in Richmond, it’s just that they’re not specifically geared toward reentry.”

A “one-stop shop” is the biggest missing link in the chain connecting county health and social services with grassroots and nonprofit organizations, advocates say.

Mayor McLaughlin addressed the one-stop shop at the meeting. “There are so many foreclosed homes and empty properties,” she said. “It would take some of you to come forward and say you’d allow a place in your neighborhood for formerly incarcerated people to meet.”

But neighborly impulses wane when it comes to specific locations. Tension surfaced between the need for a law enforcement presence, to deter crime on the spot, and community engagement in helping people coming back from prison start over.

Residents at the meeting insisted they want programs to help ex-cons get a new start, but worried about insufficient police presence around a one-stop shop for services.

Police, politicians, and health workers agree, Gagan said, on the need for a centralized hub for reentry services, but no formal plan yet exists.

But who will supply the funding for a hub in the hardest-hit places, like Richmond? And will such a place win the support of the broader community?

Times are already tough. Nonprofits that got funding from the public sector have taken a hit during the recession while the numbers they serve increase. Activist churches, grassroots organizations, and political associations have developed programs to help the poor. Fledgling projects must vie for private grants and compete for a small pot of available money from the county.

Contra Costa County’s Sheriff, Probation, and Health Services Departments will divvy up the bulk of the $4.5 million realignment fund, with over half going to new staffing of jails and courts, and a fifth towards an increase in mental health and social services.

Partly due to the state’s budget crisis, and partly due to the disjointed agency coordination around the parolee population, law enforcement finds itself in new territory, said Chief Probation Officer Phil Kader.

Rehabilitation programs are part of the realignment package, said Kader, who is overseeing realignment for Contra Costa County. Kader said that probation officers will “act as caseworkers” for the clients they supervise, and the Chief hopes to hire consultants from groups that work inside prisons to prepare people for reentry who are up for release.

But the funding dedicated to programs for ex-prisoners themselves — prep courses for the GED and anger management counseling — must also cover new training for probation officers, whose duties will expand into social work territory, according to a recently released plan by the Community Corrections Partnership, the realignment planning group.

Recently, Kader invited local groups to the meetings of the Community Corrections Partnership, opening the lines to the experience and recommendations of people who work on the ground with the reentry population.

“We are trying to do everything we can with the limited resources [the state] is giving,” said Kader.

With AB 109 funding already dedicated, nonprofit organizations that need additional money will have to appeal for federal grants or funds from the private sector, but the meetings could provide a forum for new professional alliances to form between county agencies and local activists.

They could also be a chance for Richmond’s advocates to lobby for a greater share of future realignment funding than say, relatively serene Walnut Creek.

Most residents of Richmond, with its high arrest and incarceration rate, know about the “revolving door” of prison – the cycle of young men disappearing from communities and reappearing on parole, as they get older.

A spate of territorial gun violence broke out in the city this summer, with 12 homicides in July and August alone, prompting the creation of a gang task force.

Richmond communities have for years sought means of “interrupting” this cycle, a term used by violence prevention initiatives around the country. They include mentor associations in high schools with violence problems, neighborhood conciliators like the Office of Neighborhood Safety, and community-based policing.

The current approach is a mixture. Cops and state parole agents work in tandem with Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS), a non-police agency modeled on the Ceasefire, a program in Chicago and Boston aimed at preventing retaliatory violence. According to an ONS report, they try to “engage and stave off the city’s 60-80 most likely shooters and/or most likely to be shot.”

These interventions can help, but many say the most important work is done inside prisons, before the drama of street life has a chance to interfere, and through reentry programs that match up returning individuals with opportunities.

Jeff Rutland, 48, was born and raised in Richmond. He was released from prison in 2010 after serving time on a robbery charge.

Seeing no options in Richmond, he went to the nearest housing program specifically for parolees, Volunteers of America (VOA) in Oakland, which contracts with the state parole agency to provide transitional housing for parolees. VOA recently announced it could no longer support Richmond residents, who sometimes outnumbered those from Oakland.

At VOA, Rutland said, he went on job interviews, reported home by curfew, and banked 60 percent of each new paycheck once he was employed.

Along with Tamisha Walker and three others, Rutland works as a researcher for the Pacific Institute’s Safe Return Team, and as a mentor at Urban Tilth, a local organic farming group.

Rutland is skeptical that a shift in the criminal justice delivery system will do anything to help Richmond’s problems, which he thinks have more to do with poverty and joblessness than with crime per se.

“They’ve tried this before,” he said. “When I first went to prison in 1983, you did your time in the county. Instead of saying the system is broken, they’re trying to patch it up.”

While he acknowledged that San Quentin had some meaningful, volunteer-run services for prisoners still inside, most incarcerated people return home feeling cut-off without options, and branded as a criminal.

“Why is it we can always find the money to lock people up, but we can’t find the money for these reentry and pre-release services?” said Rutland. “The funds are dried up when you want to employ a former prisoner, or train him.”

Young journalists part of youth-led website VoiceWaves.

By Jessica Portner

The waves reverberating in Long Beach aren’t just the ones rolling onto the sandy beaches. VoiceWaves, a new, sophisticated website staffed by youth journalists hopes to be as powerful as the nearby surf.

VoiceWaves is youth-led journalism and media-training project in Long Beach which enlisted eight multi-talented adolescents and young adults, from ages 16 to 24, to learn how to report, write and create digital media content. The VoiceWaves site, which recently launched, is a project of The New America Media, in partnership with Building Healthy Communities and funded by The California Endowment and the Knight Foundation. The training program is based at the Greater Long Beach Y’s Community Development branch Youth Institute, which offers instruction in photography, video, radio and the Internet skills.

The goal is for the young journalists to produce well researched, thought provoking and entertaining stories that will spur meaningful improvements in the health of Central and West Long Beach residents. Those two poorest parts of the city are rich in culture. VoiceWaves leaders point out that there are “Filipino bakeries and Vietnamese noodle houses, African American barbershops and Mexican taquerias Cambodian temples and Muslim mosques side by side.” Central and West Long Beach residents speak a multitude of languages other than English, including Arabic, Chinese, Hmong, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

VoiceWaves says the program is about generating visionary ideas and producing a new generation of storytellers. It is also a virtual gathering spot where friends, families, and neighbors can harness the power of digital and information media and contribute their ideas about how to improve the health of their families and their neighborhoods.

The website features stories an eclectic mix of serious and light pieces from a profile of a spoken word artist to a former prisoner’s reintegration into society, and a review of a Vietnamese restaurant.

“They are learning that their everyday life is a story,” said Prumsodun Ok, Project Director and Executive Editor of VoiceWaves, at a recent event in October to celebrate the launch. “It’s been such a wonderful and rich journey.”

Ok, who was born and raised in Long Beach, is committed to positively transforming diverse communities through his practice as an artist, curator, teacher, writer, and organizer. The young journalists in VoiceWaves each have a similar agenda, he says.

“This community is underserved it needs a voice,” said John Oliver Santiago, an impressive 17-yea- old college student, one of several who read their work at the event. “The Central Long Beach stereotype is a bunch of ghetto punks who know nothing else but I am challenging that idea by saying don’t insult our intelligence because we know more than you are giving us credit for.”

Santiago’s family immigrated from the Philippines in 2004, wrote a provocative opinion piece, titled “Where Are Asian Americans in the Media?” In it, he argues that Asian Americans as are largely portrayed as second-rate citizens. Santiago said this program is helping him become a better writer. He has enjoyed meeting editors at local newspapers to learn more about the skills of reporting and crafting the best story.

But his goal is not to be a journalist – he wants to work in the state department in foreign diplomacy. The Long Beach City College student is a also history whiz and has numerous academic distinctions, one for taking 10 Advanced Placement tests and scoring an average of 3 or higher. “I want to do it so this country has the most favorable odds so kids like me can have the best possible chances,” he said.

Another VoiceWaves journalist, 22-year-old Jesus Hernandez, has an equally intense drive. He is already has noteworthy journalism experience. Hernandez writes for a local social media website named 562citylife.com and is the Editor In Chief for the Long Beach City College school magazine. The stories he wrote for VoiceWaves included a topical policy story on the state’s plan to shift responsibility for thousands of nonviolent prisoners to the counties. Hernandez also wrote a piece on the freeconomy and is working on a rant for getting pulled over while driving for no reason.

His reason for participating in the project is every journalist’s credo. “I love getting the word out,” he said. “I love being the person who keeps everyone on check.”

The youngest of the young journalists in VoiceWaves is Taitu Negus, a 16-year-old junior attending Millikan High School. Negus has written a profile of her mother and also a food review of Binh Duong’s, a Vietnamese restaurant that serves stir-fried large-stripped noodles. She says her ultimate goal is to be a dentist but she likes reporting, too.

One of her favorite things about VoiceWaves is getting a good interview and a real good story written that interests people. “I am young and this is a good time to get these things started,” she said.

Playworks Program Coordinator Colin Reece, or Coach C, hi-fives second graders during their class game time. As part of the Playworks model, Coach C encourages positive interaction among grade school children during playtime.

By Mary Flynn

Elementary school teacher Vanessa Cavelli used to dread recess and the drama that could break out on the playground.

“You wonder how many fights you’ll have to break up that day,” Cavelli said.

She gestured to the large all-blacktop playground where scores of grade school children played games like four square and kickball. “If you imagine all these kids with tons of energy, and play that isn’t focused on something, then it is kind of chaos.”

“Chaos” was seven years ago at Stege Elementary in Richmond. The school is located in a low-income neighborhood where 90 percent of students are eligible for the free and reduced lunch program.

According to Principal Eddie Scruggs Smith, most of the 360 students at Stege are students of color: 64 percent African American, approximately 22 percent of the students are Latino, 11percent Asian and about 3 percent of the students are Caucasian.

“Many of our students come from low-income backgrounds,” Smith said, “but it does not affect the fact that these parents of our community want the same thing as parents whose kids are right up on the hill want.“

The neighborhoods where these children live, and its pockets of crime and violent activity can have an effect on the children’s behavior, Smith said.

“It’s because they have to posture themselves,” she said, referring to the tough attitudes and tendency towards violence many students would exhibit on the playground.

Seven years ago, playtime was a disorganized free-for-all. Even in second grade, Cavelli said, kids will fight or spread hurtful gossip. They also played games well beyond their maturity level: young girls pretending to be strippers or reenacting scenes from The Bad Girls Club.

“A lot of our kids are exposed to too much, and it does come out in their play,” Cavelli said.

Teachers and administrators decided to take action. The school got in touch with Playworks, a nonprofit organization that assigns a full-time program coordinator to eligible schools to provide structured play through sports, games, instruction and positive reinforcement.

The Program Coordinator at Stege Elementary is Colin Reece, or “Coach C,” as the students and staff call him. Reece is a towering pillar of seemingly endless energy. His enthusiasm and positive attitude make him popular with the kids and the faculty.

A typical workday for Coach C includes jumping in for a game of kickball, leading a group of enthusiastic second graders in a crazy, arm-flailing “Go, go bananas!” cheer, soothing the occasional scraped knee casualty and challenging 10-year-olds to hi-five at least three people at recess.

The Playworks Mission is “to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.” Program coordinators tackle this mission through five key components: recess, after school programs, the Junior Coach program, class game time and sports leagues.

Playworks, formerly Sports4Kids, was founded in 1996, and its first participants were students at an elementary school in Berkeley. Today the organization has grown to over 300 schools in 22 cities, largely through funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, according to Playworks spokesperson Cindy Wilson.

A school is eligible for the program if at least 50% percent of its population qualifies for free and reduced school lunch, although the average school has 85% students that qualify.

The cost to the school is an annual flat fee of $25,500. Schools vary in how they afford the fee – some pull from their discretionary budgets, others get help from PTA groups, or a combination of these avenues, Wilson said.

Stege Elementary pays for its program through Title I funds, Department of Education funds allocated to low-income schools to help bridge the gap between them and other students.

Principal Smith places a high value on what having a full-time person dedicated to play brings to the school. “It becomes an expectation, that [Coach C] is going to help with that structure as how we interact and how we play,” Smith said.

Coach C designates play areas, ensures everyone is included who wants to be and encourages positive interactions between the students during recess. “You’re out” is replaced with “Good job, nice try.” Kids aren’t required to play, but rather given options during free time.

With all the people on the playground at once during the recesses, Coach C calls for backup: Junior Coaches, fourth through sixth graders he and the teachers have selected for their leadership qualities. Junior Coaches don their purple Playworks t-shirts at recess and hit the playground to set up games and get other kids involved.

Junior Coach Edilberto Angulo, aged 11, organized a game of basketball, although he would have preferred to lead the soccer game. “I had to Rock-Paper-Scissor to see who would play soccer, and I lost,” he said with a shrug.

Rock-Paper-Scissors, or “Roshambo,” becomes a cornerstone of the playground environment. Playworks coaches teach this simple game to kids as a way of settling disputes quickly and fairly.

“Recess is such a short time that any sort of conflict just takes away,” said former Coach Amanda O’Malley, now the Regional Program Manager for Stege Elementary and seven other schools in the bay area. She said on average, schools in her region allow for about 20 minutes of recess.

Beyond wasting time, it solves the argument on the spot, she said. Doing so avoids the issue coming up in class or on the walk home.

“It’s stopping these problems and giving the students the tools to not even engage,” O’Malley said.

Junior Coaches are expected to set the standard on the playground, initiating roshambo when needed, providing encouragement, and leading the games. But their position also lends itself to the classroom.

Sixth grader Samaria Evelyn, 11, is a Junior Coach this year, but last year was not able to participate because of her grades. “Being a Junior Coach is a high privilege because you have to teach the kids to be respectful, be responsible and be safe,” she said, “It makes me want to work harder and to improve some of my grades.”

Angulo also takes his coaching responsibilities seriously. “It makes me feel good because [younger kids] look up to me, and they say they want to be like me when they are in 6th grade,” he said.

Beyond the Junior Coaching program, the Playworks coach also leads game time with each class, including the teacher. In the afternoon, Coach C lines a second grade class up along the painted line of the basketball court. He runs up and down the line, jumping and enthusiastically leading the class in a series of cheers and stretches, before launching into more physical games.

Playworks also offers an after school program where leaders invite students to work on arts and crafts projects, play games outside, or take advantage of tutoring services. At Stege Elementary, the afterschool program is run by another program, the Bay Area Community Resources. Instead of an after school program, Coach C comes in before school to diffuse potential playground issues as kids arrive for the school day.

In the evenings and on Saturdays, the children can participate in sports leagues with other Playworks schools. Coach C says that for many of these children, the Playworks sports leagues – volleyball, basketball, etc. – are their only opportunity to play on an organized team.

“We don’t keep score,” he said. “We just focus on having fun learning a sport, and try to make sports a part of their life.”

But there’s more to all of this than just fun and games, studies have shown that programs like Playworks actually help students to learn better. According to a 2009 study in Pediatrics, children who receive daily recess have fewer behavioral problems.

Another study conducted by the University of California – San Francisco determined that programs like Playworks promoted physical activity as well as emotional well-being. Students reported feeling safer and had greater participation in their schools than their peers.

“One of the biggest benefits is recovered class time,” Wilson said. She said that Playworks surveys its schools at the end of every year, and Bay Area teachers report they reclaim between 6-7 minutes of class time per daytime, which can mean up to 24 hours of recovered class time each year.

Teacher Vanessa Cavelli recalled the years she taught before Playworks, where plenty of time was lost to dealing with the drama leftover from recess. “People are upset. They’re crying, they’re mad. So there goes a half hour of instruction just to calm everyone down,” she said, “Even after that, you still have kids who are still angry and then they’re not primed and ready to learn.”

Cavelli said the Playworks program hasn’t solved all the schools problems with behavior – fights will still occur – but it has made a significant improvement.

“A lot of whatever happens at recess isn’t just about recess, but about what’s happening in their life,” she said. “[Playworks] is nice, because it makes things feel like a safe haven. It’s not about getting in fights or trying to prove yourself, it’s just playing.”

DeVone Boggan at ONS in 2010. Photo by Heather Gilligan.

By Callie Shanafelt

On a recent fall afternoon, a fistfight broke out at Richmond’s City Hall. A few young men came to pick up their stipend checks from the Office of Neighborhood Safety, a small city program dedicated to helping the people in Richmond most likely to commit a violent crime. A few men from a rival section of Richmond came at the same time to speak with ONS staff. The fight, which resulted in a broken nose and no charges pressed, ignited a local media firestorm.

TV stations and newspapers covered the incident for about a week. San Francisco’s CBS affiliate KPIX ran the headline: “Bloody Gang Fight Breaks Out At Richmond City Hall.” Web comments on the stories included statements like this: “Who cares if they kill each other off, the world will only be a little better off.”

Such coverage is not unusual in media attention to Richmond. It intensified when Office of Neighborhood Safety staff declined to co-operate with the Richmond Police investigation of the incident. Rarely was it reported that because of the nature of the program, there is an intentional firewall between the police department and the ONS.

DeVone Boggan, director of the ONS, was shocked at the coverage, much of which ran without a comment from him.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like for the many mothers in this city who’ve lost their sons and to find themselves thinking, wow, my son’s death didn’t get that kind of attention,” Boggan said.

The reaction to the fistfight highlights the challenges for anti-violence programs targeting the kind of young people that ONS counsels. ONS does not counsel at-risk kids who may some day lead a life of crime. Their clients are the known shooters, who have in the past created risk for everyone else in the community. ONS clients may not be the kind of people who inspire public sympathy – but helping them change their ways could help change the city of Richmond.

The young men are involved in the program because they were identified by law enforcement and street outreach workers as the most likely to be shot or shoot someone else within six months.

The fact that the young men chose to fight in the office – instead of shooting each other in the parking lot – is a distinct improvement from their past methods of conflict resolution.

“We didn’t have to bury anybody this week. You understand?” Boggan said. “If someone had been killed Friday because they’d decided to handle their conflict differently, we’d be planning for a funeral this week.”

The idea to target youth involved in street gun violence comes from researcher David Kennedy, who developed an intervention program called Ceasefire in Boston in the 1990s. Since the Office of Neighborhood Safety opened in 2008, The City of Richmond has been trying to raise the money and technical assistance to bring Ceasefire to the city.

The Ceasefire model involves a series of “call-ins” with local drug crews in which the people called in are told they have to stop shooting at each other. They are offered help with education and other human services, but they are also told that if they don’t stop, law enforcement agencies will come down on them harder than ever before.

ONS recently secured funding to support a Ceasfire program, but their initial grant applications were rejected.

“I kind of thumbed my nose up at Ceasefire and said fine,” Boggan said. “I’m going to create my own ghetto ceasefire and rather than call-in some people, I’m going to ask-in some people.”

Boggan also amended the program so that instead of directing participants to human services, they provide fellows with a stipend of up to $1,000 a month for utilizing human service programs such as GED courses, job-training and anger management classes. Most fellows average a $350-$750 stipend a month, he said.

None of the stipend money comes from public funds. “I think we still have a long way to go as a public around the taxpayer feeling like this is a worthy investment,” Boggan said.

Instead the program is funded through The California Endowment, The California Wellness Foundation, The East Bay Community Foundation, The Kaiser Community Benefits Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Chevron.

But Boggan continues to make his case for the cost effectiveness of the program. If all 40 fellows did earn $1,000 a month, the program would cost $480,000 a year. Boggan compares that to the $218,000 it would cost to incarcerate one youth for a year, or the thousands of dollars it costs to fly gunshot victims to the John Muir trauma center in Walnut Creek.

In the three years after ONS opened, the homicide rate went down by about 26 percent in Richmond.

“I don’t take credit for that. I think there are a lot of variables at play,” said Boggan. “But one of the variables that needs to get credit for is these young men.”

As HealthyCal.org reported in early October, the program has already changed the lives of many of the youth involved.

A major incentive for participants is the opportunity to travel outside of Richmond. But in order to go on program excursions, they have to be willing to travel with guys from rival neighborhoods. About a quarter of the fellows are willing to do so, Boggan said.

Clearly the fellows involved in the fistfight at City Hall don’t fall into that category. But Boggan did take the opportunity to mediate the conflict between them. He thinks the fact they fought at City Hall means they knew it couldn’t go too far.

A key piece to the success of the program has been the trust between the street outreach workers of the Office of Neighborhood Safety and the youth they work with.

When the initial three information sessions with guys from rival neighborhoods were held at City Hall instead of in their neighborhoods, his staff didn’t think any of the 25 young men they identified would show up.

“I said ‘can you imagine if we can get them here because of who you guys are?’ So when 21 show up out of 25, I’m going, we are off to a good start,” Boggan recalled.

At first the participants thought the meeting was a trap, he said. “They’re looking around like ‘are officers gonna jump out of the white boards?’”

He told them that he created the program because he recognized the power they had in Richmond.

“That if we wanted to see a healthy Richmond, a safe Richmond, a secure Richmond, a peaceful Richmond that I understood that it had to come through them,” Boggan said. “It had to come by way of them making better decisions.”

The street outreach workers have done a lot to convince the fellows that they are not with the police department, Boggan said. A large part of that is the protocol within the city that when incidents such as a fistfight happen, the ONS staff are not required to say who is involved.

Boggan is, however, in daily communication with the police department liaison.

Following the fight, the Oakland Tribune reported that Councilman Corky Booze demanded Boggan’s immediate removal. Other Councilmembers and City staff have expressed support for the program.

He’s committed to these young men, their families and their neighborhoods, Boggan said.

“One way or the other, we’ll be around,” he said of ONS’s future.