Why is this Project Distinctive?

The proposed project is distintive in several aspects:

• It brings techniques from alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to bear in a new setting that has traditionally been domiatned by approaches geared more towards containing gang members, or removing them from the community.
  
  
• It is based on important information about the specific kinds of conflict and types of situations that tend to arise in the everyday lives of people living in gang-infiltrated urban areas. This information comes from gang intervention workers who have in depth knowledge of their local problems, often former gang members themselves. This new information about how ADR can be effectively adapted in these communities will be used to help others across the US adapt more traditional ADR tools and techniques to increase their effectiveness in settings that differ quite drastically from those where ADR is typically applied.
  
• It will document and enhance a highly successful training program that is the first and only program in the United States to prepare community workers to use ADR techniques in gang settings. A recent report on gang reduction strategies in Los Angeles prepared by the Advancement Project suggests that the city's most pressing need right now is for more trained community workers who are prepared to intervene in established gang activities to reduce gang violence, rather than simply working with high risk youth (prevention) or getting gang members off the street (suppression). Producing a formal curriculum will allow for the training of greater numbers of community workers in complex social settings across the country where this phenomenon exists
  
  
• It is a collaboration between city government, a nonprofit collaborative of gang intervention workers, and two university based research centers on conflict resolution and violence intervention