Project to reduce violence coming to Hazelwood | The Homepage

By Juliet Martinez, managing editor

Hazelwood is a special place, in large part because of its many deep community connections. Could strengthening those connections and creating new ones lower violence and help mental health? Researchers at University of Pittsburgh say it can, and they have a way to do it.

Starting in June, these researchers and Hazelwood Initiative will bring a program called ReCAST to Hazelwood. The researchers are looking for 30 residents over age 13 to participate in a nine-week training program. It focuses on promoting resilience and well-being, fostering relationships, and identifying and solving Hazelwood-specific problems. Youth and adults will work together and separately to understand the neighborhood’s challenges. After the nine-week training, they will create a project to address those challenges. The community project is funded, and participants will be paid for participating in the training, attending project planning meetings and completing surveys.

This First Friday arts activity in Hazelwood is one example of the many events that strengthen the neighborhood's sense of community. Photo by Tameeka Jones-Cuff

What is ReCAST?

ReCAST stands for Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma. It has helped residents of 10 Pittsburgh neighborhoods and communities nationwide become agents of positive change. The researchers running the program have received funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to run the program and measure its effects.

“Not only is it probably going to save resources, but save lives and save people from trauma and help them have the support of their community,” predicted Mary Ohmer, the principal investigator and one of the program’s creators.

Ms. Ohmer spent decades as a community organizer before she got a Ph.D. in social work from the University of Pittsburgh. She now teaches there and chairs the community organization and social action specialization.

She said in an April 7 interview that her organizing work involved building relationships and helping people work toward shared goals. In grad school, she found out there is a name for this: collective efficacy.

Ms. Ohmer has described collective efficacy as “a social process that happens when neighbors trust one another, share norms and values, and are willing to intervene to address community problems.”

On April 7, she said it was a revelation to learn that her work as a community organizer has a lasting impact. Higher collective efficacy boosts mental health, and lowers crime and juvenile delinquency.

ReCAST’s mission is to promote community healing with community members leading the charge. It aims to make culturally-specific mental health services and other resources more available. It also creates more access to trauma-informed resources.

From 2016 to 2023, ReCAST trained close to 99,000 people across the United States. They learned about trauma-informed approaches, violence prevention and mental health literacy. More than 90,000 young people and their families have gotten high-quality, trauma-informed mental health care through the program. It has close to 8,000 partnerships with city and community agencies, according to the United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration.

Building relationships

Research project manager Alex Neumann administers and analyses the pre- and post-community and program surveys. She said on April 7 that in the neighborhoods they have worked in, she sees two big barriers to neighbors becoming friends. People who have lived there their whole lives feel unsure of how to connect with families who have just moved in. And in under-resourced neighborhoods that have lost a lot of population, vacant houses and abandoned properties make it harder to be neighborly.

“If you’re on a block where half the houses are vacant, boarded up, or frequently broken into, it makes it more fearful and not as easy to go out and meet people,” she said.

Ms. Ohmer said other challenges include age gaps and racial and cultural differences.

ReCAST’s work in Pittsburgh follows the gun-violence prevention guidelines of the Allegheny County Office of Violence Prevention. These guidelines say programs should be evidence-based and help people stay out of the criminal justice system. They should also offer training and support to community leaders working to reduce youth violence. That is what ReCAST does, and it starts by getting people together.

The training sessions start with one of the most primal forms of community building: breaking bread together. From that shared meal, the participants work together to identify community problems and learn about how to intervene and stop violence from escalating.

“I look at the training sessions and there are two layers,” Ms. Neumann said. “It’s an opportunity for residents to build community and get to know each other. The more they get to know each other, the more they help each other and have these skills to intervene. The more they have those skills, the more they will help with problems in their communities.”

Learning to care for each other

Ms. Ohmer described a recent training session in McKees Rocks-Stowe where the topic was police. A young Black participant showed a doorbell camera photo of a police officer stopping him in front of his home. The officer had his hand on his gun in the photo, and the young man said he had felt extremely unsafe.

After the youth and adults split into separate groups, one of the adults asked why none of them said anything to comfort or support the young man. Another adult, a white man, dismissed it as a matter of Black-on-Black crime, not a police problem. But through the open discussion and input from the facilitators, the adults came to a decision. When the youth returned, they formed a circle around the young man to tell him what he had experienced was wrong.

“It showed how they were learning to care for each other,” Ms. Ohmer said.

Ms. Neumann told another story from that group. One of the participants said in her post-project survey that she had already used her violence intervention skills. She encountered a man in her neighborhood who was having a crisis that seemed to be escalating. She talked with him and kept the conversation light to defuse the situation. She said she never would have been able to do that before.

Building a stronger Hazelwood

The ability to resolve crises before they spin out of control is one of the biggest skills the program teaches.

“This project actually feels like we are going in and working with the community to help them handle things themselves,” said Lauren Coursey, the director of engagement and sustainability for Hazelwood Initiative.

The community development corporation is partnering with ReCAST because of the nonprofit’s mission to build a stronger Hazelwood through inclusive community development.

“Part of being stronger is being able to intervene in your own community, and making people feel like they are not powerless,” Ms. Coursey said. “Because they’re not.”

To learn more about the project, visit bit.ly/Hazel-RECAST. The sessions in June will be held at JADA House International at 4944 Second Ave.