Community, Family and Youth Resilience Program Annual Report October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017 Submission Date: Updated December 21, 2017 Submitted by: Debra Wahlberg, Chief of Party Creative Associates International This document was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development/Eastern and Southern Caribbean (USAID/ESC) Mission. July 2008 1 1. PROJECT OVERVIEW Program Name: Community, Family and Youth Resilience Activity Start/ End Date: July 1, 2016 – September 30, 2020 Name of Implementing Creative Associates International Partner: [Contract/Agreement] AID-OAA-I-15-00011; Task Order No. AID-538-TO-16- Number: 00001 Name of Pan American Development Foundation; University of Subcontractors/Subawardees: Southern California; YouthBuild International Geographic Coverage Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and Guyana Reporting Period: October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017 1.1 Executive Summary The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Community, Family and Youth Resilience (CFYR) program is being implemented by Creative Associates International (Creative) in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean (ESC). This four-year program applies a public health approach to reduce and prevent youth violence, using specialized interventions to reduce the rate of offenders in target communities; improve the skills of youth entering the workforce; and provide specialized services to youth at the highest risk of engaging in violence. CFYR is implemented primarily in Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and Guyana and its core target beneficiaries are youth between the ages of 10 to 29. The program’s place-based strategy concentrates prevention activities in a set geographic area to boost overall community resilience and empower local stakeholders and government institutions. The CFYR Program includes primary prevention services such as social and leadership skills workshops and opportunities to increase youth workforce readiness, community activities that promote positive youth-police contact1 and campaigns to challenge gender norms that are currently permissive of violence. CFYR will also provide reintegration support for youth from CFYR communities leaving the juvenile justice system. The program provides specialized secondary prevention services for families whose youth are at higher risk for engaging in violent behavior. CFYR will train a network of family counselors who will utilize a family counselling approach to lower youths’ risk levels. 1 CFYR does not currently work with police or security forces in Saint Lucia due to outstanding issues pertaining to the Leahy Amendment. 1 This report covers activities implemented by the CFYR Program during the October 1, 2016, through September 30, 2017, annual period. CFYR achieved a number of milestones of regional significance during the first year of program implementation. CFYR has established strong working partnerships with the public, private and non-government sectors at the central and community levels in Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and Guyana. As the Program continues with full implementation in the next program year, CFYR will continue to build partnerships that meet the expected objectives and contribute to the sustainability of outcomes and activities. In November 2016, CFYR planned, coordinated and executed the launch of the regional USAID YES Project in each of the CFYR focus countries on behalf of USAID/ESC. CFYR also provided critical logistics support to regional and international participants to attend the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative Technical Working Group Meeting on Preventing Crime in Trinidad in April 2017, to focus on the importance of using data and information to support evidenced-based decision making. CFYR applied a data-driven approach to selecting communities for CFYR programming within the three focus countries of Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and Guyana, supplemented by a broad base of stakeholder interviews. The recommendations received unanimous approval from the National Advisory Board2 (NAB) in each country, and CFYR is facilitating the development of Community Safety Plans for the 15 communities to reduce violence within communities. CFYR initiated a rigorous research agenda to guide implementation that had the added value of building partnerships with a number of key stakeholders in all three focus countries. These included, among others, Guyana’s Specialists in Sustained Youth Development and Research (SSYDR) and Saint Lucia’s Central Statistics Office, both of which partnered with CFYR in conducting the Community Baseline Surveys in their respective countries. Partnerships were enriched through a number of multi-stakeholder meetings that CFYR convened to introduce the Program and demonstrate how it can impact communities by reducing youth violence. CFYR commenced fieldwork for its Community Baseline Survey in all three focus countries to understand youth perceptions of safety within their communities to support program implementation in Year 2, followed by a rapid assessment of the role that gender plays in crime and violence prevention that will inform strategic actions around gender norms at the community level. CFYR negotiated a contract with the Institute for Applied Social Research to 2 USAID established a National Advisory Board (NAB) in each focus country (Saint Lucia, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis). Each NAB includes representatives from host country partners that interface with each component of the larger USAID YES Project. Representatives on each NAB include a variety of ministries, departments and agencies; the private sector; and youth representatives. Each NAB provides guidance to YES project implementing partners within its country. The Saint Lucia NAB provides guidance to YES partners in Saint Lucia; the Guyana NAB provides guidance to YES partners in Guyana; the St. Kitts and Nevis NAB provides guidance to YES partners in St. Kitts and Nevis. 2 gather qualitative data using focus group discussions in the five communities in Saint Lucia, that will inform development of the Community Safety Plans and contribute to building community cohesion. Some of CFYR’s most exciting activities are happening at the local level in close cooperation with each of the fifteen communities across all three focus countries. CFYR is already working to establish Community Enhancement Committees (CECs) in all 15 CFYR communities, and 12 of the 15 communities have already begun to implement a range of primary prevention activities and are moving to formalize their status through elections and a public launch. The CECs will serve as important referral networks for youth to participate in the full range of Program activities. CFYR spearheaded a key scoping activity mid-year to prepare for asset-mapping exercises across all CFYR communities. Based on meetings with 115 community residents across six CFYR-supported communities, CFYR mobilized and trained youth who will collect data that will be included on digital community maps in Year 2. The asset-mapping activity is designed to meet multiple objectives by engaging at-risk youth, providing them with a marketable skill-set and empowering them to contribute to local solutions to address violence. The data collected will further support CECs to develop initiatives to build youth, family and community resilience and reduce the potential for youth to engage in violence. During the program year, CFYR conducted intensive training for seven teachers and two student volunteers across four communities in Saint Lucia in coding and robotics. This initiative, when piloted in four schools in Saint Lucia during Year 2, is expected to reach 180-240 youth and provide them with skills that will begin to prepare them for employment opportunities. In Saint Lucia and Guyana, 390 youth, aged 10-29 from CFYR communities, participated in activities or received training to build their social and leadership skills during the program year. CFYR’s groundwork for the family counseling intervention, also known as the Prevention and Intervention Family Systems Model (PIFSM), which forms a major component of CFYR secondary prevention activities, resulted in adaptation of the Youth Service Eligibility Tool (YSET). Originally developed by consortium partner University of Southern California, the YSET is a risk assessment tool that measures levels of risk among youth ages 10 through 17, to determine their eligibility for the PIFSM that CFYR will undertake with local partners in Year 2. This resulted in the YSET’s first time application in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean region. CFYR has identified government partners in the three focus countries to host the PIFSM, evidenced by an in-kind grant application from the Ministry of Community Development, Gender Affairs and Social Services, Counseling Unit in Saint Kitts and Nevis to implement the model. CFYR expects to receive similar applications from the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice, Empowerment, Youth Development, Sports, Culture and Local Government in Saint Lucia and the Ministry of Social Protection in Guyana early in the next program year. 3 USAID/ESC is conducting an impact evaluation of the PIFSM in the ESC region, and CFYR has worked closely over the last program year to provide substantial input to the independent evaluators, Social Impact (SI). This impact evaluation will be the first, large-scale randomized control trial experiment of a youth intervention model in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean and the impact evaluation