Program areas at Seattle Neighborhood Group
The impact safe schools leadership conference: this year Seattle Neighborhood Group piloted an impact safe schools leadership conference for middle school students. A couple dozen middle school youth met online to discuss mental health and safety in their schools. Seattle Neighborhood Group staff participated in breakout rooms alongside facilitators allowing space for youth voices to be heard. The high school conference was hosted in-person at a local community center. The conference theme was healthy minds, healthy communities, and featured guest speakers and opportunities for youth breakout groups. Business safety program: Seattle Neighborhood Group's crime prevention business outreach focuses on helping small businesses, especially bipoc, and immigrant & refugee businesses, and businesses located in sng's crime hot spot areas. Through one-on-one encounters we listen to challenges faced by business owners and offer help and tips. We share printed information in spanish, chinese, amharic, tigrinya, vietnamese, english, and other languages. We address barriers to information and resources. Challenges included accessing credible, authoritative, and current information that could help them keep their businesses running safely, if not profitably. Rainier beach: a beautiful safe place for youth (abspy) is an innovative and community-led crime prevention initiative in the rainier beach Neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. We identify and address the place- based causes of youth victimization and crime at five focus locations, known as "hotspots," in the rainier beach Neighborhood. In addition, we engage the rainier beach community, Seattle police, and many other community-based organizations, businesses, and schools to implement non- arrest interventions. The place-based, non-arrest approach is founded on research at george mason university's (gmu)center for evidence-based crime policy, which determined that crime impacting youth is highly concentrated at the place. The research further indicates that formal criminal justice approaches can negatively affect youth, their futures, their families, and their community. Public safety program in south park: in the south park Neighborhood of Seattle, wa, Seattle Neighborhood Group's public safety coordinator continued to support community safety efforts. These efforts included youth engagement activities, Neighborhood clean-ups, business outreach, and gang graffiti paint-outs. Outreach program to east african community: we continued our outreach to seniors in the east african community. We also collaborated with various partners to provide community safety information and helped provide food vouchers, bus tickets, and supplies such as tote bags, flashlights, and first aid kits.
The safe communities project emphasizes crime prevention and community building in Seattle's most vulnerable communities through collaborative partnerships. We provide leadership development, crime prevention education, grass roots organizing and crime "hotspot" problem solving. Outcomes include connecting people to their communities and providing access to community services and activities. We work to reduce the specific community risk factors of community disorganization; perceived availability of drugs and firearms; and laws and norms favorable to Neighborhood attachment. Seattle Neighborhood Group collaborates in place-based problem-solving using crime prevention through environmental design site analysis in high crime locations, provides community support at various events, conducts community education in crime prevention for property owners & managers, personal safety, vehicle security, and identifying suspicious activity. Our brochures are available in 11 languages and our trainings regularly incorporate interpretation for various language groups as needed.