A Mental Wellness Intervention Addressing Community
and Youth Violence in Philadelphia

Philly 4 Life is a Philadelphia-based youth/school violence-prevention project, set to launch as a pilot in the Fall and Winter of 2022. We are excited about providing local youth with the protective-factor, emotional-regulation and life skills they need to positively cope with the kind of stress and trauma that can put them at risk for being a victim or perpetrator of violence. These skills will allow them to focus on living and thriving, rather than merely surviving community violence.

MEE (Motivational Educational Entertainment) Productions Inc. has talked about this strength-based approach with professionals in schools and youth-serving organizations, with city-government officials, and with numerous grassroots, community-identified leaders across Philadelphia. These discussions with community stakeholders let us know that a “protective factors-driven” project like this is much needed in our city.

P4L connects Philadelphia youth to positive adults, who are a proven protective factor. For the 2022 pilot, we will focus at the organizational level, recruiting adults who engage with youth on a daily basis as professionals working at a range of institutional or nonprofit settings. Then, through a digital platform and interpersonal dialogue between youth and these “Adult Allies,” we give young people the skills and confidence they need in order to practice self-care and cope differently with violence and other daily challenges we know they will face. READ MORE

Does your program or organization have positive, non-judgmental and caring staff who see young people’s strengths when others might only see their deficits, based on first impressions?

Does your frontline staff build the kind of relationships that allow them to encourage and support youth daily, so that they can be safe and succeed?

Who does Philly 4 Life need as Adult Allies? We are seeking caring, nonjudgmental adults who:

• Have regular access to at least five (5) Philadelphia youth ages 14-22 who you engage and interact with on a regular basis, through your work in a local institutional or nonprofit setting.
• Have current child abuse and criminal background check documentation
• Are open to attending a training session that prepares them to be an effective protective factor in the lives of the youth they encounter
• Understand the need for and how to navigate a parent/guardian consent process to enroll youth under the age of 18

If you provide one of the 3Ps, connect the youth in your program, or in an institutional or nonprofit setting, to a positive, skills-building and culturally specific experience. Attend one of our Chat & Chews and fill out the organizational contact form below in order to bring Philly 4 Life’s strength-based, trauma-informed package to your institutional or non-profit provider setting.

With P4L, prevention and intervention happen in concert, an innovative advancement in how services to at-risk youth are traditionally provided (either-or approaches).

In addition, it brings youth to community-based service providers instead of them having to “chase youth down” and persuade them in order to provide the wellness skills that can improve their life outcomes.

As part of MEE’s pre-intervention training, provider staff will learn how Philly 4 Life helps them act as a protective factor for youth in their care. These Adult Allies will also play a critical role in onboarding youth into P4L and supporting the completion of its lessons and activities.

MEE has extensive public health experience with traumatized communities, as manifested by negative coping behaviors such as youth and community violence, substance misuse and suicide. This includes work at the federal, state and city/county levels and with partners both in academia and at leading national foundations. Numerous large-scale community-participatory interventions (over the last three decades) have provided us with the evidence and insights that a primary-prevention approach grounded in strengthening protective factors is the best way to address the risk factors, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and social determinants of health that continue to keep low-income communities of color at a disproportionate disadvantage. Now, after months of design, planning and engaging with the community, we are preparing to launch a full citywide pilot of Philly 4 Life in the Fall and Winter of 2022.

• MEE’s approach identifies the social determinants, barriers and arguments that prevent youth from making informed choices, and “counters” them with do-able steps to move from pre-contemplation to action.
• MEE uses a community-participatory, “by-and-for” process to develop and deliver authentic and persuasive information in such a way that behavioral changes are sustainable, even for populations facing numerous barriers and challenges.
• To arm at-risk youth with the skills needed to thrive in the face of repeated exposure to extreme poverty and trauma, MEE leverages a mix of communications channels, both online and offline (in-person), that meld the latest digital media technologies (online) for scale with “human-ology” (offline community dialogue) for impact.

The risk factors that continue to keep low-income Black and Brown urban youth at a disproportionate disadvantage for survival must be addressed through a community-at-the-center, protective-factors framework. Such an approach provides inoculation against the stressors and daunting social determinants of health (SDOH) that become major barriers to youth achieving and maintaining optimal health as they transition into adulthood.

Philly 4 Life focuses on what we collectively can do—immediately—to save lives and improve life outcomes. MEE believes that this hybrid (online/offline) protective-factor intervention has tremendous and untapped potential as a healthy alternative to punitive approaches to violence prevention, because it gives low-income, at-risk youth the positive “handling” tools and thriving (resiliency) skills they both can relate to and apply in their daily lives.

Positive Coping Postcards and Social Media Content