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The current study seeks to understand the potential benefits of culturally matched cross-age peer mentoring for Black and Latinx adolescent mentors residing in low-income, urban communities. Data for the study were derived from a 4-year longitudinal project examining the effectiveness of community-based cross-age mentoring. Data from the current sample (N = 249, 60.6% female, M = 16.72 years) were analyzed using HLM. Findings indicated that the mentoring relationship bond rather than attendance predicted change on several positive outcomes. Adolescent mentors were found to experience improvements in several areas of positive youth development, ethnic identity, and GPA after the program was completed and at 9 to 12 months follow up. Researchers propose an adapted theoretical model of the impacts of youth cross-age mentoring in low-income communities of color. Findings from the current study offer key information on the value of facilitating empowering, person-focused services in concert with members of marginalized communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Many Mexican American families are immigrants who reside in under-resourced, urban communities, where they are at risk for numerous stressors, ranging from poverty to community violence. This paper analyzed qualitative data from Mexican American urban youth to explore their perspectives on neighborhood stressors, psychosocial difficulties and coping. Methods: A community-based participatory research approach was used with Mexican American youth from a Chicago neighborhood to explore personally salient experiences of living in their community. In collaboration with a community organization serving this neighborhood, 32 youth ranging from ages 12–18 with differing risk levels for violence and resilience participated in focus group sessions. Participants were asked about and discussed a wide range of topics covering (a) neighborhood characteristics and experiences; (b) psychosocial functioning and youth empowerment; (c) connection to school and community; and (d) family and cultural experiences. Results: Based on content analyses, three themes emerged related to stress (i.e., violence, gangs and the police, poverty) and coping strategies (i.e., avoidant, aggressive, and active coping). While pervasive stress appeared consistent across all groups, coping styles and psychological sequelae varied across the youth. Conclusions: The study demonstrates the importance of incorporating culturally relevant strategies, such as reframing, support seeking, and engaging familism, when developing interventions for use in this population. Furthermore, maximizing social supports by providing access to appropriate mentors and supportive peers should be a focus of educational programming and intervention with these youth. Finally, the authors offer a discussion of how these results might inform future community-based research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The scourge of community violence that besets young citizens in high-poverty U.S. communities of color is a compelling social problem to address. This article synthesizes studies of causes and preventive services for youth violence, including randomized controlled experiments and theoretical, case study contributions. Available evidence indicates that causes of youth violence are complex and interact across multiple layers of social systems. Accordingly, single-factor programs and policies developed for other populations tend to be ineffective for addressing the many injustices with which youth in high-poverty, high-crime communities of color contend. Therefore, we develop a perspective that is developmental, multi-systemic, and restorative of youths' dignity. Responding to researchers' calls for more contextually-grounded case studies of causes and remedies for youth violence, this article focuses on Chicago, where street violence rates in some communities are among the highest in the world and have increased in the last several years. First, we describe the intersectionalities of catalysts of violence, such as institutional racism, police brutality, deficits in child protection, and deep poverty, in a developmental systems-based framework. Next, we frame community service principles with population-specific features, recognizing cultural and community strengths and youths' significant resilience and potential. Drawing from Afrocentric social thought, positive youth development, trauma treatment models, cognitive behavioral, and empowerment approaches, we describe intervention principles for community-based services. Examples are drawn from decades of work with Chicago's impoverished African American youth on the violence-beset south and west sides of Chicago. Highlights • Poverty, racism, maltreatment, trauma, and educational neglect trigger violence • Chicago's violence surge followed school, mental health and social service cutbacks • Prevention occurs via relationship-focused services and equality-focused policies • Programs need tailoring to youths' culture, strengths, supports, and disadvantages • Many sources of evidence show effective options to prevent and treat youth violence [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to violence (ETV) poses a serious threat to adolescents’ safety and well-being; however, some adolescents who grow up in such toxic environments are able to thrive due to a combination of internal and external characteristics. The current study examines the role of cohesion across contexts (i.e., family, school, and community) as moderating the relation between ETV and positive internal outcomes characteristic of resilient youth (i.e., ethnic identity, positive affect, and self-esteem) in a sample of low-income, urban, African American adolescents (N = 269, 60% female) from seventh grade to eighth grade. Results indicated that greater cohesion in each context was directly related to more positive outcomes. Family and neighborhood cohesion additionally served as protective enhancing factors for males exposed to high levels of violence. These findings expand the current research on positive youth development and help locate potential environmental targets for prevention and intervention research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined whether peer association, a subtype of peer influence that involves the indirect modeling of behaviors, can promote positive development among Black American adolescents living in high‐risk neighborhoods. Data were collected during a three‐year longitudinal study from a sample of 316 Black American adolescents (M = 11.65 years). As positive peer association increased over time, youth experienced an increase in self‐esteem, school connectedness, paternal and maternal closeness, and a decrease in supportive beliefs about aggression. Additionally, lower ethnic identity appeared to account for why some youth experienced a sharper increase in maternal and paternal closeness as positive peer association increased. Future interventions should consider harnessing the ability of prosocial peers to foster healthy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite focused efforts toward the prevention of youth violence within the United States, it continues to adversely affect the lives of children and families within our communities and society at large. The articles in this issue address risk and protective factors that affect violence among urban youth to inform prevention and treatment. Pathways to youth violence are complex and may begin early. Prevention efforts in school, family, and community settings that address risk and protective factors within a socially, culturally, and ecologically valid context early in human development are crucial. While challenges remain for the prevention of youth violence, research suggests opportunities to improve our efforts. Federal agency initiatives in partnership with communities are currently underway to increase the knowledge base and advance prevention of youth violence among diverse populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent delinquency, drug use and aggression remain societal concerns. These problems are more common with adolescent boys than girls, and tend to increase with age. Although a lack of parental monitoring has been found to be related to problem behaviors, the mediating role of monitoring on the relationship of sex and grade to problem behaviors has not been directly studied. This paper examined parental monitoring as a mediator of the relationship of sex and age to delinquency, drug use, and aggression in a sample of urban African American young adolescents. Our findings indicated that in general, boys and older adolescents reported higher rates of delinquency, drug use, and aggressiveness. Boys and older adolescents also indicated less monitoring by parents. Parental monitoring was found to mediate the effects of sex and grade on some of the behavioral problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• African American and Latine youth living in low-income communities contribute meaningful, culturally relevant insights about intervention outcomes and mechanisms of action. • Intervention outcomes prioritized by African American and Latine youth living in low-income communities are self-regulation, empathic communication, persistence, positive racial identity, and positive social supports. • African American and Latine youth living in low-income communities experience participatory opportunities to be co-program designers, evaluators, and researchers as contributing to positive intervention impacts. • African American and Latine youth living in low-income communities experience considerable fulfillment in caregiving for community children. • Cross-age peer mentoring interventions can strengthen community cultural wealth of youth of color and promote their collectivist strengths. This project draws from youth voices to develop theory about outcomes and change mechanisms in a cross-age mentoring out of school program with urban African American and Latine youth living in low-income communities. With instructors' supports, African American and Latine mentors (N = 148, ages 14–20) in four U.S. urban, high-poverty communities of color mentored children weekly for an average of 16 sessions, followed by a debriefing session. Researchers used qualitative, participatory methods to elicit mentor perspectives about what made their program impactful. Diverse qualitative data were collected by staff and youth and analyzed thematically. Outcomes adolescent mentors deemed meaningful were 1) developing good character, specifically persistence, leadership and listening skills, patience, respectful collaborations, goal-oriented hopefulness, and more positive racial identities, and 2) building trustworthy, supportive relationships with mentees, peers, and instructors. Mechanisms mentors regarded as generating outcomes were 1) being active agents in program implementation and evaluation, and also contributing knowledge about themselves, and 2) the fulfillment of caring for community children, which youth regarded as a partial remedy for deprivations and injustices their communities experience. Differences in emphasis based on gender are described. Outcomes and generative mechanisms are discussed in relation to youths' community cultural wealth. Comprehensively empowering youth to co-lead program development, implementation, evaluation and theorizing can improve the fidelity of scientific knowledge to youths' strengths and priorities, and yield theories of intervention consonant with youths' cultural wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In middle adolescence the weekend evening emerges as an emotional high point of the week. It becomes a period for peer group and romantic activities that are generally enjoyable, although the social scripts for Friday and Saturday night also create risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• For all participants, traveling to a higher-crime program area was negatively related to attendance. • Mentor variables related to attendance for mentors included stress, perceived family resources, and race. • Variables related to attendance for mentees included age and having a sister in the home. • Funding for programs in high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods must budget for transportation. This study examines predictors of attendance in a cross-age youth mentoring program offered in four high-poverty, high-crime communities. Youth in greatest need of after school and summer interventions are those residing in such communities, but programs are scarce. More specific to mentoring programs that do exist, past research has demonstrated the significance of attendance as a predictor of positive outcomes. Two datasets were combined for this study: The Saving Lives, Inspiring Youth (SLIY) mentoring program dataset and a neighborhood database. OLS regression results show that for all participants, traveling from a lower-crime home area to a program in a higher-crime area was negatively related to attendance, as was age. In addition to crime, variables related to attendance for mentors included stress, perceived family resources, and race, whereas age and having a sister were related to attendance for mentees. Implications for program designers and policymakers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]