SANKOFA provides violence prevention instruction for both youth and their parents/guardians. The goal of the SANKOFA Program is to equip youth with the knowledge, attitudes, skills, confidence, and motivation to minimize their risk for involvement in violence, victimization due to violence, and involvement in violence-related behaviors. The specific objectives of the SANKOFA Adolescent Intervention are to: 1) provide knowledge to support the value of nonviolent conflict resolution; 2) diminish stereotypes and beliefs that support violence; 3) increase awareness of facts concerning violence and factors that render one at risk for violence-related injury and death; 4) promote anti-violence attitudes; 5) strengthen the internal locus of control for participants; 6) assist youth in understanding that they have choices; 7) enable youth to identify the optimal violence-prevention strategy in a given situation; 8) enlarge youth’s skills repertoire for nonviolent conflict resolution; 9) provide opportunities for mentally rehearsing nonviolent means of conflict resolution; and 10) increase youth’s intentions to resolve conflicts without violence. The specific objectives of the Parent Intervention Program are to 1) increase parental understanding of violence and related risk factors; 2) promote positive parent/adolescent communication; 3) help parents establish clear and consistent expectations of their adolescents; and 4) offer guidelines on how parents can encourage adolescent pro-social behavior, as well as reinforce the skills taught in the adolescent training program. SANKOFA has roots in the theory of planned behavior, which posits that behaviors are directly determined by specific behavioral intentions, which in turn are determined by attitudes and norms regarding the behavior. SANKOFA is also informed by social cognitive theory’s concept of self-efficacy: Youth must believe that they have adequate skills to respond nonviolently to a provocation in order to form the intention to do so.

Target Population

- Grade Level: from  Eighth grade to  Twelfth grade