Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • The ex-monk and the Thai sex mafia: helping victims find another way

    Wat Arun Rajvaram Community Learning Centre, founded on Buddhist precepts by a former monk, has trained more than 250 Thai young women for work as nurse assistants, jobs aimed at keeping them out of the illicit sex trade, forced labor, and arranged marriages. High school graduates, ages 16 to 19, are selected in groups of 15-20 per year, mostly on scholarships paid by donors. They typically come from rural towns where poor families often sell their daughters to traffickers. Nearly all graduate and are guaranteed jobs at hospitals and health centers in Bangkok or elsewhere in Thailand.

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  • Homicides dropped after Philly gangs signed a 1974 peace pact. What can we learn from the org that brokered the truce?

    The House of Umoja in West Philadelphia, created in the late 1960s in response to high rates of gang violence, succeeded in helping thousands of young men through a residential treatment program, mediating disputes peacefully, and brokering a gang truce credited with lowering Philadelphia violence in the 1970s. The program was based on Afrocentric customs and family structure (its name means unity in Swahili). The grandson of the founders is now trying to revive the home as part of the city's multiple anti-violence initiatives.

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  • How tech is tackling wildlife trafficking

    Three examples of new science behind successful efforts to prevent or punish the poaching of protected wildlife starts with PAWS: Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security, an artificial intelligence tool that helped officials in Cambodia predict where poachers would set snares. In an undisclosed location in East Africa, another form of AI powers a miniature trail camera that can detect human activity and alert rangers to rush in for arrests. And Kenya prosecuted four cases of pangolin trafficking by using a new method of lifting fingerprints from the poached animals' precious scales.

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  • How Violence Interrupters Brokered An End To Anti-Black Attacks In A Latino Neighborhood Audio icon

    When protests against police violence turned into looting and anti-Black violence in some Latinx neighborhoods, violence interrupters from groups such as UCAN, EnLace, and Chicago CRED brokered a peace agreement that almost immediately ended that violence. The outreach workers’ years-long relationships and training in dispute mediation gave them credibility to address historic racial tensions among gangs in Lawndale and Little Village. The violence could have escalated, but three days of negotiation – and a sense of common cause against racism in policing – united the neighborhoods.

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  • Band of Others: Breaking patterns of violence

    Specialty dockets are used in some states to provide extensive follow-up and supervision to help juveniles end gang affiliations. The enhanced supervision usually includes a curfew, frequent unannounced home visits, regular courthouse meetings, and in depth mentoring. A federal grant recently made it possible for a Texas docket called Juveniles United Navigating Obstacles Successfully (JUNTOS) to also offer therapy services to at least 36 adolescents over 3 years. Gang re-entry data is scarce and there is a risk of focusing only on youth of color because the gang designation excludes white supremacy groups.

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  • How They Did It: Investigating a Country with 2,000 Clandestine Graves

    A nearly two-year investigation of Mexicans who had gone missing, and presumably murdered, produced a series of stories based on the database of at least 2,000 graves across Mexico. A group of independent reporters and photographers called “¿A dónde van los desaparecidos?” (where do the disappeared go?) supplied victims' families with information that previous government and private efforts had not, and that fueled demands for definitive information on their loved ones' deaths. More than 40,000 people have been reported missing in Mexico since 2006 amid drug-related violence.

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  • Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground

    The passage of the 2018 Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act was meant to hold accountable the online platforms where sex trafficking and sex work took place, but a year into its existence, it has shown negative, unintended consequences. The legislation has effectively shown an impact in moving sex trafficking offline, but experts now say it has moved onto the street, making it harder to track and catch.

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  • This Man Says His Anti-violence Plan Would Save 12,000 Lives

    With support for a New York-based grant program, Buffalo has been trying various evidence-based approaches to decrease violence, especially gun violence, in the city. The grant program, Gun Involved Violence Elimination, or GIVE, provides funding for police departments to adopt strategies like hot-spot policing, deterring those most at-risk, or street outreach to break the cycle of violence. While such strategies are linked to success, the process of implementing them, gaining support and trust from the community, and waiting for long-term change has proven challenging.

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  • These Young Activists Are Fighting Chicago's Gun Violence With Lobbying and Group Hugs

    A group in Chicago called Good Kids, Mad City is made up of youth who have been affected by gun violence. They offer support and accountability to each other and use the group as a way to cope with the daily violence they face every day. In addition to the therapeutic benefits of the group, the youth have even lobbied and passed legislation that expunges non-violent marijuana offenses as part of the state’s marijuana legalization proposal.

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  • Upcycling Guns

    Giving guns a nonviolent afterlife can also increase economic opportunity for struggling communities. In El Salvador, IM Swedish Development Partner, a nongovernmental organization, is addressing the issue of guns and violence by creating new partnerships and opportunities. Through the Humanium Metal program, confiscated guns are recycled into raw material and then sold to companies that produce finished products like watches, jewelry—and even toys. The funds from the project go back into funding efforts to further reduce violence in El Salvador’s communities.

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