Enrichment 2 Empowerment (E2E) offers New Orleans youth ages 14 to 19 the opportunity to connect and collaborate in creating a project or action plan to address violence in the city. Their voices are critical to understanding community needs and providing information and resources.
Through guest speakers, workshops, and excursions, participants:
- Tell community stories through photography, art, and other visual, written, or oral narrative expressions
- Develop research skills such as investigative interviewing and survey design
- Connect and learn from activists, government officials, and more
This summer, E2E participants created a foundation of knowledge on which to base their project. The students learned about Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), explored their community to learn more about the history of New Orleans, and Interacted with guest speakers to better understand some of the challenges within the city as well as the way those challenges are being met. We focused on providing empowering opportunities, such as youth led conversations, social-emotional learning, involving the youth in decision making, and having the youth create a research question. Through mutual respect, having fun, and being open to new learning opportunities, this cohort of youth were able to not only create a research question that addresses violence in the city but a bond with each other that we hope continues to grow.
In the next phase of E2E, we are inviting the youth back throughout the fall for 11 interactive Saturday Sessions. In these sessions, we will use our research question that we developed in the summer along with the skills we learned to begin our social action campaign. This phase will be an opportunity for the young people and the community to actively collaborate in the process of addressing violence in New Orleans. Through community exploration, more guest speakers, and art-based research methodologies like poetry, photovoice, and interviews, the youth will be able to create impactful community change.
E2E is a collaboration among the Center For Youth Equity in the Violence Prevention Institute at Tulane University and Beloved Community and funded by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention as a National Center of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (YVPC).
E2E Slideshow by Violence Prevention Institute
