What can individuals do about youth violence in Chattanooga?
We are ramping up to launch our fifth Causeway Challenge, and this time we asked you to help us choose the question. The response was overwhelming: so many of you want an opportunity to do something about the violence affecting youth in your communities. We hear you, and we want to come alongside you to implement strong solutions in your neighborhoods.
Causeway’s mission is to inspire and equip Chattanoogans to develop smarter solutions to our city’s toughest challenges, and this is certainly a tough challenge. Just since January of this year, there have been over 62 shootings in Chattanooga, with many of them involving teens as both the victims and the aggressors. We know that this is a deeply systemic issue with roots in poverty and education.
Through the Causeway Challenge, we typically give out $3000 in grassroots funding to community leaders who have identified potential solutions to a problem. But here’s the thing: we’ve realized that this issue does not quite fit into our typical structure. The Causeway Challenge is meant to give everyday individuals the opportunity to test their ideas and prove that they work, to open doors for future growth and sustainability. Lasting impact is always the goal, but on the topic of youth violence, this becomes immensely important. A solution to youth violence that is not consistent and in it for the long-haul is not a solution at all.
No matter what lens we look at it through, $3000 is not going to do much to combat this issue without the right research, partners, and plans for sustainability behind it. We want to do this right, and that takes time. At Causeway, we refuse to say, “but this is the way we’ve always done it.” We are willing to taking a step back, and to change our plans to better support this complex problem.
We plan to open applications later in the summer, looking for youth-informed solutions to violence issues. Before we do that, we will connect with key partners, and plan for sustainability.
Along the way, we want to keep hearing from you.
Join Causeway and the Pediatric Health Improvement Coalition on Saturday, June 18th for a documentary screening and discussion. Paper Tigers explores the impact of childhood trauma on struggling teens. The film follows a year in the life of Lincoln High Alternative School, which developed a new academic curriculum based on the challenges of kids who have significant childhood trauma. They saw a dramatic turnaround in everything from the number of fights to test scores to graduation rates. The school has become a promising model of how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease through the practice of trauma-informed educational strategies and is a testament to what the latest research on childhood adversity is proving: that one caring adult can change the trajectory of a young person’s life. Sign up here, it’s free!
In the meantime, become a mentor. There are hundreds of kids in Chattanooga on waiting lists through local agencies. We believe in the power of positive influence. Your consistent presence in one kid’s life could be the difference between a life of struggles and violence, or a life of health and success.
