Overview
Reducing crime and violence among youth is a high priority for citizens and governments in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean. While considerable progress has been made to understand the factors that contribute to youth violence, there is a lack of high quality data pertaining to effective practices and approaches to counter this issue in the Caribbean.
Responding to the need for a systematic approach to evidence-building and dissemination, the “Building Evidence on Security and Community Resilience in the Caribbean” program is a three year activity designed to support the creation and use of evidence by policy makers and organizations. To this end, USAID awarded a grant to Northeastern University’s Center on Crime and Community Resilience (CCR) to work in close collaboration with government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in 10 Caribbean countries to:
- Assess promising practices through rigorous evaluations conducted by Northeastern University or other U.S. universities.
- Strengthen the monitoring and evaluation practices of select local partners through workshops, trainings, and customized technical assistance.
- Disseminate knowledge on youth crime and violence prevention by drawing upon evidence gathered through scoping and other assessments.
The expected results of this program include:
- Governments and NGOs have a stronger base of evidence to inform the design of more effective youth violence prevention policies and programs.
- Improved country capacity to use evaluation data to inform strategies, policies and programs to reduce youth involvement in crime and violence.
- Host country endorsement and utilization of evidence.
