Conversation with Pioneers: An interview with Candice Kane

This month we continue our Conversation with Pioneer Series with Candice Kane, the chief operating officer of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention and the organization’s CeaseFire initiative. CeaseFire, which is funded through the RWJF’s Vulnerable Populations Portfolio, works with community-based organizations and focuses on street-level outreach, conflict mediation, and the changing of community norms to reduce violence, particularly shootings. Launched in 2000, CeaseFire treats violence like a public health epidemic that can be prevented.  The program engages the community to work with people at high risk of being involved in violence to provide on-the-spot alternatives to shooting and change social norms about gun violence. A recent evaluation of the program has demonstrated its effectiveness in reducing the size and intensity of shooting hot spots in targeted Chicago neighborhoods.

Susan Promislo blogged about CeaseFire over the summer and highlighted the organization’s use of virtual world tools and techniques to advance their anti-violence mission. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to talk with Candice Kane further about their use of Second Life and their innovative approach to training outreach workers and violence interrupters.

What role does Second Life play in your anti-violence efforts?

Perhaps the most vital component of CeaseFire are the violence interrupters and outreach workers. These are street-smart individuals, many of whom are former gang members, who give back to their neighborhoods by mediating high-risk conflicts and reducing violence – specifically shootings. There are three areas that our outreach workers and violence interrupters need to master to be successful in their work. They have to be able to identify and engage clients; they have to be able to relate to the community; and they have to be able to mediate and resolve conflicts, anticipate retaliatory action and intervene before something happens.

When we started training our outreach workers and violence interrupters, we were using a lot of role playing to simulate the situations they would need to mitigate. It was clear that for some people, approaching and talking to strangers was difficult and intimidating, understandably. Our outreach workers are very effective with people they already know and most of our workers know many of the people in their community. However, there are going to be occasions when our outreach workers and violence interrupters need to approach people they don’t know or need to approach people in threatening situations, and we wanted to help them build their confidence for these types of interventions.

We’re trying to make Second Life a core component of our training for violence interrupters and outreach workers. It is a safe environment that lets the workers navigate these types of interactions and practice approaching strangers or threatening situations.

What has been the value of moving to a virtual world for training?

Most of our violence interrupters and outreach workers are former gang members. Most of them have been in prison for violent crimes and some have served more than 20 years in jail. As you might expect, many of them don’t have formal employment experience. Their reading and comprehension skills vary from the 6th-8th grade level to college level; most they don’t write a lot and, since they don’t work with computers on a regular basis, are not computer literate.

So, it is no surprise that it is not practical for us to use written materials in our trainings. It means that our trainings need to focus on learning through doing, not reading or even through oral presentations. Our outreach workers have to observe, they have to do it own their own, they have to practice and get feedback on how to improve. Second Life has given us the space for that practice and that doing. And more importantly, it is fun for people, especially if you give them a few Linden Dollars so they can go out and buy their own outfit.

Can you share some examples of what happens on CeaseFire Island?

Second Life gives the workers a chance to practice different scenarios. Their worker’s avatar might need to approach a young guy, played by a CeaseFire staff member, who is on the streets dealing drugs, waiting for his next buyer to come by. The worker might have to deal with a hostile response if the client feels the worker is interfering with a potential sale. The interaction gives the worker the opportunity to think about the whole process of approaching someone. What signals do you look for? What do you have to be aware of, in terms of what’s going on around you? What if there are three people standing together and they seem to be in a conversation? Or if it’s a heated conversation, would you even walk up to them? Why would you walk up to them? Why wouldn’t you walk up to them?

We have a scenario where we actually have done some filming and we show somebody taking the brochure, and then throwing it on the ground and going, “I don’t need this shit.” How do you handle that? What do you say? What do you do? How do you know when you may be threatened? So Second Life gives us the opportunity to play out those scenarios and then debrief on what worked and what didn’t.

We also put a lot of effort into helping our clients rethink their life and their behaviors so there are structural and cognitive behavioral changes that we’re looking for, things like getting a job or seeking help to kick a drug habit. It is important for our workers to think about how they help others solve problems. There’s a temptation with our workers, and probably most of us, to immediately go to solutions. Someone says, “I need a job,” and so the inclination is to say, “Well, I know they’re hiring over at the store on the corner, why don’t you go over there tomorrow and put in an application?” Well that’s not what we want the workers to do. We want them to be a coach, an advocate who will help the client understand why they want a job, what type of job and help them acquire the skills they will need to be successful at a job.

Check back tomorrow to hear more about how the outreach workers and violence interrupters are using CeaseFire Island and have responded to trainings in Second Life.

About Candice Kane: Candice M. Kane, Ph.D., J.D., is the Chief Operating Officer of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention, a strategic public health initiative to support community-based and city-wide violence prevention. Her responsibilities with the Chicago Project include day-to-day oversight of all program activities, including those related to CeaseFire, the campaign to stop shootings and killings, and evaluation. In addition to her management duties, Dr. Kane is actively involved in the framing and implementation of policy, program development, drafting of program-related materials including training curricula and brief performance reports, and budget projections. Prior to joining the staff of the Project, Dr. Kane was director of a state planning and research agency and part of the University of Chicago team that developed, implemented and tested the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Comprehensive Gang Model.