How do you rectify years of neglect and systemic violence in blighted areas?
Change the way the neighborhood sees its self.
Kristine Angell, Connecting People
Changing Behaviors
Anti-Violence Neighborhood Campaign
Client: CeaseFire Chicago, the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Team: Kristine Angell, Amanda Gepart, Apeksha Garga, James Barton, Shivani Mohan, Hye Kyong Yoo
Project Goal: The project goal was to develop a communications strategy to change the thinking about the social norms and behaviors that perpetuate the transmission of violence at the individual and community level.
CeaseFire Chicago believes that violence is a disease caused by learned behavior and social norms, the ceaseFire model seeks to interrupt the transmission of risk events and change the social norms and behaviors that perpetuate the transmission of violence at the individual and community level. In some neighborhoods it is an epidemic, threatening the lives of everyone who comes in contact with it. CeaseFire has had success working directly with the high-risk, but has had trouble connecting with the low-risk persons of the neighborhoods it works in. A dedicated team of graduate students at the Institute of Design developed a participatory communications platform designed to build bridges that decrease fear and improve public safety within high-risk communities. Central to this strategy are the credible messengers that build trust and partnerships in the community to define the community’s role in increasing the peace.