The Fuller Youth Initiative
Linda Wagener, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean, Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Pasadena, California

Faculty Investigators (in alphabetical order): Warren Brown, PhD, David Foy, PhD, Jim Furrow, PhD, Sofia Herrera, PhD, Lisseth Rojas-Flores, PhD

The mission of the Fuller Youth Initiative is to identify and disseminate critical intervention strategies for at risk youth for community use. The Fuller Youth Initiative pursues its mission through three interactive elements: research, evaluation of existing violence prevention programs, and dissemination of information on best practices for youth violence prevention.

Research

The goal of the FYI research program is to increase our understanding of individual community factors that are associated with the promotion of well-being and the prevention of risk among children and youth. The following are the main objectives of the FYI research program:

• Identify and compare the role that personal and community resources play in shaping positive developmental outcomes in youth reporting violent behavior and youth demonstrating exemplary moral behavior
• Assess the impact of these resources on the effects of risk factors commonly used to predict onset of adolescent violence
• Explore the relationship of youth gambling behavior to adolescent violence

Program Evaluation

The goal of the FYI program evaluation is to empower existing community violence prevention programs to track the effects of their efforts with youth at risk. The FYI program evaluation's main objectives are:

• Promote systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of existing grassroots violence prevention efforts and assist with program evaluation and consultation
• Identify and gather information about effective strategies and barriers to implementing and sustaining effective at-risk youth interventions and make reports of findings available for community use
• Educate practitioners of youth violence prevention about the use of asset-based prevention practices as effective means of violence prevention

Education

The overall goal of the FYI education effort is to host and participate in conferences on youth positive development and violence prevention for local, regional or statewide practitioners and researchers of youth violence prevention. The objectives of these conferences include:

• Establish community and professional prevention network partnership
• Educate local community and faith-based organizations in use of best practices to increase their program's effectiveness
• Share and disseminate FYI research and program evaluation results to the Greater Los Angeles County practitioners and larger research community

To view of copy of the final report click here