The Deeper Impact of Reducing Youth Violence

The show focuses on how reducing youth violence has benefits far beyond the impact on the young people themselves. Guests are Bernice Sanders Smoot, founder of Saint Wall Street, Kwame Johnson, National Director of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise’s Violence-Free Zone program, and William Wubbenhorst, a Non-Resident Fellow of Baylor University’s Program on Prosocial Behavior. Wubbenhorst has recently completed case studies of the Violence-Free Zone program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Richmond, Virginia.

Episode Segments:

The Bob Woodson Show: The Panel's Projects Kwame provides a detailed description of the Violence-Free Zone, how they work with teachers, and make them less afraid to do their jobs. Then, Bernice Sanders Smoot tells us what Saint Wall Street is, what it does, and the value of what it is providing to the community.
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The Bob Woodson Show: Why Youth Advisors Work Kwame explains how they select their youth advisors, and why they are successful, while other programs are not. Then, the panel discusses whether credentialed people are actually qualified to work in social services if all they offer are programs that don’t work.
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The Bob Woodson Show: Funding Programs that Work William explains why you must look at many factors & outcomes before you judge whether an anti-violence program is successful or not. The panel also discusses ways community based organizations should approach their funders, and why the current budget crisis may be a blessing to programs such as the Violence-Free Zone.
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Links to Related Websites:

Saint Wall Street Where good programs become great investments.

Guest(s) Appearing on this Episode

William Wubbenhorst William Wubbenhorst serves as a project manager for the Faith Service Forum and is the lead subject matter expert within Macro International, Inc. in the area of faith-based and community initiatives and the establishment of faith-based and community organizations' partnerships at the local, state and federal level. Mr. Wubbenhorst is currently working on behalf of the US Department of Labor (DOL) and the Corporation for National and Community Service's Americorps*VISTA program on projects related to those agencies' faith-based and community initiatives. For DOL, this work entails supporting the Department's efforts to develop local partnerships between workforce development boards and faith-based and community organizations to better serve hard-to-reach populations with training and employment services. The work for Americorps*VISTA involves an evaluation of the number and types of faith-based and community organization partners, along with selected profiles of model programs, particularly in the area of mentoring children of prisoners. Prior to that, Mr. Wubbenhorst worked for 8 years in Massachusetts state government. During his time in government, Mr. Wubbenhorst was directly involved in implementing changes to state contracting policies for human service providers through pricing and performance-based contracting reforms. He has also authored and published a case study for graduate management school on efforts to reform the state's $1.4 billion purchase-of-service (POS) system for funding social service programs. Mr. Wubbenhorst has published a number of articles pertaining to Charitable Choice and the Faith-Based/Community Initiative and served as an independent research consultant for the Center for Public Justice, conducting research on Charitable Choice and other related faith-based initiatives. He recently published an article entitled Workforce Development and the BlackChurch -- Knowledge, Interest, Commitment, and Collaborative Potential: A Memphis Case Study in the Fall 2006 edition of Social Work and Christianity. Mr. Wubbenhorst previously published an article entitled Enough About Leveling the Playing Field: What's the Playing Field? in the Spring 2003 edition of Social Work and Christianity. Mr. Wubbenhorst also published a case study entitled CVS/pharmacy: It's a Matter of Faith through the Boston University in 2006. Mr. Wubbenhorst also authored two papers through the Center for Public Justice entitled Charitable Choice in Massachusetts: An Un-tapped Resource in February of 2000 and The Pitfalls of Contracts for Funding Faith-Based Ministries in January of 1998. Mr. Wubbenhorst received an MBA with a concentration in Public/Non-Profit management, from Boston University's School of Management. He is currently a Technical Director at Macro, International, Inc. Learn more about William

Bernice Sanders Smoot Since 1998, under the banner of Saint Wall Street, Bernice Sanders Smoot has provided nonprofit development training and support for thousands of grassroots programs across America. For programs economically challenged today, she offers Program Return on Investment (PROI) training, the new, proven, grassroots-friendly way to help programs grow beyond single-source grants dependency to diversified income and self-sustainability. Ms. Smoot’s group trainings and speaker presentations have been hosted on-site and online by sponsors that include: the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance; the US Department of Labor’s Center for Faith-based and Community Initiatives; Pepperdine University; Regent University; the Performance-Excellence Institute; Collective Banking Group; and Servant Christian Community Foundation. Attendee surveys consistently yield a 99% Excellent rating.Ms. Smoot also has provided strategic planning facilitation and consulting services for enterprises serving nonprofit programs, including ICF Macro International, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, the National Center for Fathering, TimeBanks USA, Rappahannock Area Health Education Center, Emmanuel Christian Community Development Center, and other nonprofit organizations and businesses across the US. Ms. Smoot's social-enterprise consulting, by greatest example, is that rendered to establish HomeFree-USA in 1995. This fee-based nonprofit homeownership development program now has a multi-million-dollar budget and 91 affiliates across the U.S. Prior to assisting nonprofit development, Ms. Smoot served the marketing and public relations interests of several businesses and DC government. As a corporate-marketing professional, she developed for National Loan Servicenter an innovative customer communications strategy that significantly increased timely mortgage payments from low-income HUD clients. Accomplishments as a business-marketing consultant range from achieving record sales on QVC for a Maryland inventor, to researching and producing for Perot Systems a market forecast that accurately predicted the future of home-buying in America. On staff for the DC Mayor’s Office of Communications, Ms. Smoot wrote and edited agency reports, press releases, and constituent publications, as well as talking points for mayors Marion Barry and Sharon Pratt Kelly. She also has been a frequent radio guest on local stations, addressing faith-based and minority community development. Saint Wall Street Website