DO YOU addresses youth violence by confronting root causes and enhancing protective factors (building resilience) to promote positive development and healthy relationships for young people age 13-16 years old. The UnCurriculum (the facilitator’s guide for DO YOU) uses primary prevention principles and creative expression as strategies intended to prevent violence before it ever starts. The DO YOU program achieves this by using two approaches or phases:
Phase 1: DO YOU
In this phase, teens create a ‘zine about their own cultural backgrounds, values, experiences and goals over the course of 10 sessions with a trained facilitator. Sessions relate to specific goals and open with interactive activities and end in creative expression.
Phase 2: DO SOMETHING
After completing the 10 sessions of DO YOU, teens identify a community-level campaign or project that they would like to execute. DO YOU group members brainstorm what they would like to see change in their communities, and follow a structured process to narrow and prioritize those ideas, set goals and objectives for the campaign, make plans for implementation, and execute the campaign once the 10 sessions of DO YOU are complete. DO SOMETHING is designed to help their community and enhances their sense of value and belonging in the community – creating a sustainable mechanism in which youth are active and integral to the system that impacts them.