A group of community-minded researchers, scholars and grassroots advocates from around the world recently came together at Brock’s Hamilton campus to discuss the pressing issue of youth gangs.

The inaugural Summer Institute for Peace in Civil Society event was held July 18 and 19 and drew about 160 experts regionally, nationally and from around the globe.

The event’s theme of juvenile and youth gangs was chosen following a community engagement event held last November, during which community members shared a “strong suspicion that the summer of 2018 would be a summer of violence,” said lead organizer and Brock Associate Professor of Sociology Tamari Kitossa.

“We chose to begin with youth because we heard from our community partners that was a fitting place to start,” he said. “We need to figure out how to develop conflict resolution mechanisms within communities.”

About 160 people gathered for the inaugural Summer Institute for Peace in Civil Society event held at Brock’s Hamilton campus last week. Among them were workshop leaders David Letele, of New Zealand and Vaiba Flomo, of Liberia; Hamilton Councillor Matthew Green; workshop leader Babette Boyd of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington; and Florence Anfaara, a graduate student from Western University.

As it stands, government responses to youth gangs around the world “centre on short-term militaristic tactics based on fear, hatred and misrepresentation,” Kitossa said on behalf of the organizing committee, which also includes Maria Suescun Pozas and Jean Ntakirutimana, both of Brock University, Erica Lawson of Western University and Louis March of the Zero Gun Violence Movement.

“The result has been a blaming of youth for violence, but this perspective avoids basic acknowledgment that the expansion and deepening of gang culture among youth is spurred by the ‘structural’ violence of fear mongering by politicians, repressive tactics of police, over-use of incarceration and intensifying exclusion of already marginalized youth.”

Societal change is required to address the violent tide that has formed, and that begins with community collaboration, Kitossa said.

The Summer Institute event was intended to bring researchers, community partners and front-line workers together to discuss best practices, to inspire collaborations between organizations and to act as a starting point for related research. It also aimed to demonstrate to youth peaceful measures that can be emulated and the progress that can be made when people work together.

The event included contributors and workshop leaders involved in the Liberian Women’s Peace Hut Movement; prison reform, transitional housing and substance misuse treatment in New Zealand; and gang exit in El Salvador.

One speaker also shared her personal story as an Indigenous woman who escaped gang life in Canada, describing the path that she took to healing.

The various presenters shared their experiences and insight into their organizations in hopes of passing on the most effective means through which they’ve been able to work with others.

Such collaboration between community organizations is a key component of future progress, Kitossa said.

Many organizations are competing for the same funding, which is “draining their ability to be creative and to fully provide service to youth in the community,” he said. As a result of the event, participants are beginning to rethink how they engage with funding agencies and are looking at ways resources can be pooled and most effectively used.

“We’re not only engaging with the community, we’re having community walk with us,” Kitossa said. “We are not leading them. They are not leading us. This is a true partnership.”

As a result of the event, participants will write research papers, generate news articles and op-eds, and continue collaborations that began with identifying priorities arising from discussions over the two-day event.

Future Summer Institute events will focus on different themes, to be determined by participants during a post-mortem exercise happening this week.

Kitossa said the Summer Institute was well supported by Brock University institutional grants, various departments and units, political leaders, external agencies and a broad cross-section of enthusiastic people who believed in its vision.

A full list of those who helped to fund and support the Summer Institute event is available online.