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Village Project outlines youth-violence intervention services and outcomes
Summary
Village Project said its mentoring-based youth-violence intervention worked with roughly 65 youth and families in the grant period and described services including in-school advocacy, court support, reentry assistance and planned gardening and independent-study programs.
Ronan Harris and Elijah Vilanga of Village Project presented an overview of their grant-funded youth violence intervention program to the Seaside City Council on March 20, summarizing services, participant demographics and future goals.
Harris said the program provides mentorship, in-school advocacy, legal advocacy including court support and probation compliance assistance, behavioral interventions for truancy and substance use, and life-skills enrichment. "We work with youth, families, schools and other organizations to implement strategies to intervene and disrupt violence and the potential for violence on campuses and in the community," said Elijah Vilanga, who described student-support and community-engagement components.
Village Project reported 65 youth served in the grant period across age groups; their slide-level breakdown showed 25 participants ages 11–16, 25 ages 16–18 and 12 ages 19–21, with the larger outreach often overlapping into schoolwide or campus events. The presenters listed race/ethnicity counts on their slide: 22 Black/African American, 28 Hispanic/Latino, 10 White, three Asian and two Pacific Islander participants.
Council members asked about recidivism and program continuity. Vilanga and Harris said they do not maintain a standard recidivism metric; instead they emphasized continued engagement and reentry support for youth who return for mentoring after initial contact. "We have kids we started working with at elementary school level and we’re still working with them in high school," Harris said, noting the program sometimes provides short-term interventions for students in crisis as well as longer mentorship and probation-support services.
The presenters described future goals including accessible gardening programs for elders and incapacitated residents, expanded support for independent-study students through mentorship and tutoring, therapeutic and social-engagement activities, and strengthened collaborations with Monterey Peninsula Unified School District and community-school efforts.
Council members thanked Village Project for its work and asked staff to follow up on how the program’s scope and outcomes could be supported or expanded in partnership with Seaside schools and funders.
