Customized Audio and Video Programs

Voices Against Violence, a video-based violence prevention intervention, was a joint effort between HHD and Columbia University’s Center for Youth Violence Prevention, with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The project targets middle school students and addresses the role bystanders can play in preventing—or increasing—youth violence. A major component of the intervention is a 26-minute video that offers five hypothetical scenarios to trigger discussion in classrooms, as well as between parents and their children, about appropriate bystander behavior.

During the development of the video, numerous steps were taken to encourage community involvement—holding focus groups to inform content, refining the script with community advisors, and working with a mix of professional and community actors as cast members. The video was shot in settings familiar to middle school students. The narrator, Erika Harold, Miss America 2003, was a victim of bullying as an adolescent; her platform focused on youth violence prevention.