A group of parishioners from St. Josephine Bakhita Parish in the city’s South Shore neighborhood is taking action to reduce violence by training youth in middle school and high school to identify violence in their lives and communities and respond with nonviolence.

Led by Elfriede Wedam and Andre Rawls, both university professors with extensive experience in nonviolence work, the group offered an anti-violence leadership training on five Saturday mornings in August and September at St. Phillip Neri School, 2110 E. 72nd St., for youth in seventh through 12th grades.

The group received an $8,000 grant for the program and about 15 students participated.

“We call it Youth Leadership in Nonviolence because we need youth to be on the front lines in making change and influencing their peers in positive ways. It’s a very extensive program,” Wedam explained.

“The idea was to start planting the seeds of nonviolence in young people, seventh through 12th grade, so that as they matriculated they had that within them,” Andre Rawls said.

Phillip Bradley, president of Nonviolenceworks, led the sessions. Some parents attended along with nonprofit leaders who plan to partner with the group and to repeat the program elsewhere.

The program pulls from the roots of nonviolence as practiced in the Civil Rights movement and by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Wedam explained.

“It all comes back to Jesus Christ and the Sermon on the Mount. Everything that nonviolence teaches can be found there,” she said. “The program is very well designed logically and emotionally to begin to understand how to respond when there are situations that are negative situations.”

The students learned to identify the eight stages of violence, with the ultimate goal being reconciliation.

“The program is comprehensive in a sense. It’s both, ‘How does a person learn themselves as an individual to think differently, act differently, influence other people?’ — a real cultural approach, in that sense. And then, ‘What about the world?’” Wedam said.

“For these young people, it not only becomes a lesson in nonviolence but a history lesson. Many of the criteria that happened in the past that caused nonviolence to be necessary, these young people weren’t born then. So it becomes a living history,” Rawls added.

All people can learn nonviolence.

“Without knowing certain steps, you can’t do it. Nonviolence can be taught,” Bradley said. “We just don’t know the steps. We have to have leaders and young people that understand nonviolence as a way of life.”

Young people are key to creating a peaceful future.

“It’s teaching young people early on the simplicity of it and to see how they can start applying it in their everyday lives. It’s a whole other vocabulary. It’s a whole other mindset,” he said.

The group has applied for another grant to hold the anti-violence leadership training during the school day for students, parents and teachers at St. Phillip Neri School. Ultimately, members hope to convert Our Lady of Peace Church, which recently closed, as a peace center for their neighborhood. 

“South Shore is always one of the top 10 neighborhoods that gets cited for high crime,” Wedam said. “It’s our neighborhood. It’s our community. It’s our church.”