To help us help them

The Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine has been working in conjunction with the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles and L.A. Bridges, a gang intervention program developed by the City of Los Angeles, to train community counselors in alternative dispute resolution techniques to help defuse conflict in urban environments, particularly between gangs and at-risk youth and other members of their communities.  

Paula Garb is the co-director and co-founder of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding and Associate Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine.  She is an internationally recognized facilitator and researcher of citizen peacebuilding projects.  Her research has focused on the conflict between two territories in the former Soviet Union, Georgia and Abkhazia.  Dr. Garb also uses her Abkhaz-Georgia experiences to examine the ways citizens are helping to resolve disputes in areas such as Kosovo, the Middle East, Cyprus and Northern Ireland, drawing on these findings in the conflict resolution classes that she has taught to Los Angeles gang intervention workers and UCI students since 2000.  She received her M.A. in anthropology from Moscow State University and her doctorate in anthropology from the Institute of Anthropology of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Bill Martinez is Manager of the Youth and Gang Violence Intervention Specialist Training Program at the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.  He is also Co-Director of the Unity Collaborative, a network of gang intervention agencies that serves the West, South and Central areas of the City of Los Angeles, and a former Executive Director of Community Youth Gang Services.  Mr. Martinez’s previous experience has spanned diverse issues, including economic development and redevelopment public finance, transportation and emergency preparedness planning.  He previously served on the Board of the L.A. Commission on Assaults Against Women and is a founding member of the Los Angeles County Association of Community-Based Gang Intervention Workers, where he is also a member of the Board of Directors.  Martinez’s educational background includes an M.S. in City and Regional Planning from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Jerald Cavitt, co-instructor in the Gang Violence Intervention Specialist Training Program, has been a volunteer promoting understanding between rival gangs in his South Central Los Angeles community since 1994.  Two years ago, he joined Unity Two, a nonprofit gang intervention organization in Los Angeles, and more recently he launched an affiliate organization, Unity Two Chapter Two, as its CEO.  In the summer of 2004, he helped negotiate the understanding between two rival gangs, the “Swans,” and “East Coast.” His gang intervention work takes him to South Central Los Angeles, and parts of West Los Angeles, Perris, Hawthorn, and Rancho Cucamonga.