Research Team
Project Overview
Reducing crime and violence among youth is a high priority for citizens and governments in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean (ESC). While considerable progress has been made to understand the factors that contribute to youth violence, there is a lack of high-quality data pertaining to effective practices and approaches to counter this issue in the Caribbean.
Responding to the need for a systematic approach to evidence-building and dissemination, the Building Evidence on Security and Community Resilience in the Caribbean program is a three-year activity designed to support the creation and use of evidence by policymakers and organizations. To this end, USAID awarded a grant to CJP to work with ESC governments and nonprofits to: identify promising youth crime and violence prevention models; strengthen the monitoring and evaluation practices of local partners; and conduct rigorous evaluations of select innovations.
Over the life of the project, CJP consulted with roughly 300 organizations in 10 Caribbean countries to assess their research needs and develop a comprehensive directory of youth crime and violence prevention initiatives. Collectively, the program’s capacity building activities benefitted 240 representatives from government and civil society with targeted research support provided to select organizations that met CJP’s evaluation criteria. To date, the program has resulted in the creation and implementation of 10 evaluations, from which findings will inform decisions to scale and contribute to the evidence base on effective models in the Caribbean context.
