2021 COMBAT Funding: $50,000.00

In DeLaSalle Education Center's Own Words

Programing In School & Out

DeLaSalle’s Violence Prevention program is a multifaceted approach to Prevention, Intervention, and Restoration to best serve DeLaSalle’s students.  DeLaSalle’s proactive approach to violence prevention includes offering on-site programming with support from Camp Fire Heartland and school-initiated strategies during school hours as well as after school hours—with off-site programming at organizations such as Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City and having staff or mentors dedicated to be available and/or respond immediately to situations at all times of the day, night, or weekends.

Programs offered during the hours from school dismissal to the evening will provide positive interactions with other students and adults, as opposed to these hours often being the times students are most susceptible to negative influences in their lives.   In addition, DeLaSalle will teach to the socio-emotional competencies that are life long and all day skills.

Services Directly At DeLaSalle Education Center

Violence prevention Services include during-school and after-school programming. DeLaSalle offers activities that keep students busy with positive activities and interactions with adults in a safe and secure environment.   Activities will also occur during the hours from when school is dismissed through the early evening (3:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.). Statistics show that these hours can be the time period when students are most vulnerable, exposed and likely to commit to acts of violence.

Additional services include mentoring support for students that are struggling with social issues such as bullying, stress, etc. Having an adult present at all times will prevent violence by allowing the students to de-escalate and offer an environment of preventative care.  

Services At Boys & Girls Clubs

SMART Moves is an age-specific, progressive, nationally recognized program focused on providing youth with resistance training in the areas of substance abuse, violence, peer pressure, bullying and other dangerous behaviors. The center-point of the DeLaSalle's overall prevention program is on providing young people from Kansas City's urban core with access to safe, secure, positive environments on a daily basis, as well as ongoing educational programming to keep youth engaged in beneficial, healthy activities.

Services At Camp Fire

By providing conflict resolution to adolescents, Camp Fire Heartland is serving young people at a critical time in their social/emotional development as well as their physical development. Thus, by providing a program that teaches young people to calm their emotions and resolve conflict in a manageable way, among many other outcomes, young people benefit from lower stress levels, which have a significant impact on their long-term health.

Services At MINDDRIVE

MINDDRIVE is a project-based experiential learning program that serves students from around the Kansas City Metro. Mentoring is a key component of our after-school programs with a student-to-mentor ratio of 2:1. They teach problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration through math, science, technology, innovation and communication, giving our students deep-level experiences with real world applications. Programming includes automotive design, digital content design, drone FPV racing and robotics.

Services At We Code KC

WE CODE KC is an initiative that serves the urban core of Kansas City, exposing youth to various programming languages, technology, cyber security and computer science concepts. Learning the basic concept of coding develops creativity, problem solving skills, builds confidence and helps to build a positive future. Every child, no matter their zip code or their family’s financial status should have the opportunity to learn to code.

Childhood Experiences Have Lifelong Impact

According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Division of Violence Prevention 2019 report “Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences: Leveraging the Best Available Evidence,” children and youth who experience adverse childhood experiences (ACE) can have their healthy brain development disrupted, have their social development affected, and be at higher risk of substance misuse and other unhealthy coping behaviors. According to the study, the childhood years from prenatal to late adolescence are the “building block” years that help set the stage for adult relationships, behaviors, health and social outcomes. 

Some children may face further exposure to these toxic stresses from historical and ongoing traumas due to systematic racism or the impacts of multigenerational poverty resulting from limited educational and economic opportunities.  

Multiple studies show that youth committed to juvenile justice facilities suffer from extremely high numbers of adverse childhood experiences, with 53% reporting four or more ACEs. This is considerably higher than the Missouri state average which reports 12% of children under 17 have experienced three or more ACES,a according to the 2014 Child Trends Research Brief. The findings carry implications for life long poor health and justice outcomes unless other services are accessible. 

However, communication, connectedness, and internal resilience can significantly reduce the relationship between high ACE exposure and psychological distress.

Meeting The Needs Of Students

DeLaSalle’s students come from zip codes that represent systematic poverty, high occurrence of ACEs, violence/ crime, low-high school graduation rates and high unemployment. Without a violence prevention program, DeLaSalle’s tiered intervention program to proactively address violence and mental health will be incomplete.

DeLaSalle is building a comprehensive infrastructure and system to constantly address the mental health needs of our students. Violence prevention is a critical piece of the program that needs to be funded.

The study highlights several aspects of Preventing ACEs that DeLaSalle will implement through Jackson County COMBAT funding. These include:

• Promote social norms that protect against violence and adversity
• Connect youth with caring adults and activities
• Intervene to lessen immediate and long-term harms