Center for Neighborhood Enterprise to Host Conference on Youth Violence

Lindsey Burke / November 12, 2009

To hear Bob Woodson speak is to be convinced that there is an effective way to mitigate youth violence. And on Monday, Woodson, President of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, will kick-off Presenting the Evidence: A Successful Solution to Youth Violence.

During the late 1970s, Woodson was influenced by the example of a family in Philadelphia who had opened their home to gang members as a place to live, reconcile differences, and begin a new life in the workforce or school. By 1981, Woodson had founded the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise to provide tactical assistance to other neighborhood leaders and catalytic groups in violence-plagued cities throughout the country. After an epidemic of gang violence in the Northern Virginia area in 2005, Woodson wrote in The Washington Post:

…my organization and a courageous grass-roots group called the Alliance of Concerned Men negotiated a truce between rival groups in Benning Terrace, where some 53 youth deaths had occurred in the previous two years in a five-square-block area. The truce was followed by a program of life skills and counseling, and D.C. Public Housing Receiver David Gilmore offered employment training and jobs. The key to this program has been the involvement of individuals such as those in the alliance — men who were once part of the problem and now wanted to become positive influences on young people there. (more…)