Module 8:
JusticE
Overview
This module centers the importance of justice in this project, and all of the work performed by Credible Messengers.
Understanding Justice: We will understand what we mean by justice, beyond the scope of criminal justice, and into the ways justice looks in a community and for people.
Implementing a Justice Framework: How do we as researchers and community members use a justice framework in our actions and words? What steps can we take to better reflect our commitment to justice?
Healing through change: We will discuss how fighting for and creating justice-oriented change in our built environment can be healing for ourselves and others.
We recognize that the scales of justice are not balanced as things stand.
Justice - Defining an Elusive Term
Justice is a difficult term to nail down. It means something different to every person, in every context. For us, though, justice is centered on and acknowledges the individual. This is a part of why we focus on participatory methods - the lived experience of the people research impacts are the most important influences on what, how, and what questions research is conducted. Listening to, incorporating, and building with our community researchers is critical to this. The same applies to the mentees we're studying: their experiences, interests, and knowledge is necessary and central to our research design.
Our research cannot be neutral to these influences. It is built by, for, and towards improving the lives of the community involved. There's a feedback loop built into this - on purpose. Your knowledge helps us change the project design, which helps us better capture what actually goes on. We can repeat this process until we're all proud of and comfortable with the projects scope and outcomes.
Justice is using our position, as members of a research institution and being backed by it, to boost the voices and fight for the betterment of the marginalized - to enact social change, to influence public policy, and to contribute to improving the situations of the people we engage in research with. It is refusing to remain neutral on issues which impact people in different ways, standing up for people who don't get a chance to do so themselves, and amplifying the voices of those who often have theirs robbed.
Justice in our Study
This study is built around including the voices of our community researchers: you. One aspect of this is using Community Engaged Methods (CEMs). Our aim is to incorporate your perspectives in all steps of this project. Our partnerships with credible messenger programs is the first step in this: this expertise cannot come from within Urban. Only through the expertise of you all - our community researchers with lived experience - can we build a study which accurately captures the impacts of credible messengers for those participating.
Likewise, to serve and bolster the cause of youth justice, we use a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) framework. This includes centering the voices of the young people involved in the data collection and the mentoring groups we're studying. We orient our project around the outcome of showing the benefits to youth. We're also using a positive youth development framework. In doing so, we'll be using growth as person and community member as our metrics for mentoring impact, rather than comparing youth on negative outcomes.
Building a study in such a way - participation from the ground up with the community involved - is how we make justice-oriented research a reality. The results and outcomes of our study carry more weight and have higher impact when informed, designed, and conducted around the experiences and understandings of you and your mentees.
The Takeaway: Our study is planned around enacting change. This change though, is not imposed from the outside. The justice framework includes, amplifies, and is built around the voices of the people most impacted by the study. It is only through this inclusion from start to finish that we can achieve these goals. Centering community voices are key to designing the right study, capturing the right data, and driving the right outcomes. Where can we do better? Your feedback is essential to this becoming your study.