Engaging Somali Young Adults in Cedar-Riverside: Opportunities for Programming and Collaboration

Abstract

The Cedar Riverside Neighborhood Revitalization Program (CRNRP) and the Somali American Education Program (SAEP), along with others in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, have serious concerns about the neighborhood’s young adult Somali population due to last year’s spike in homicides (3), reports of gang activity, and the disappearances of young adults allegedly returning to Somalia. To address these concerns, CRNRP and SAEP partnered with our team of three graduate students from the Humphrey Institute Cedar-Humphrey Action for Neighborhood Collaborative Engagement (CHANCE) on a research project. We used a community-based research model to achieve the following goals:

• Assess the scope and capacity of current programs for Somali young adults; • Determine areas where programming was missing or could be enhanced; and • Engage Somali young adults in a co-creative dialogue to identify their needs and capacities and to make use of their knowledge and experiences in identifying solutions. Our research included a review of the relevant literature, identification of promising practices, an analysis of current programming for young adults, identification of program funding opportunities, fourteen interviews with community stakeholders, and two learning circle conversations with youth. While we will focus on the Somali population within Cedar Riverside, we believe that our recommendations and program suggestions may be utilized to address the needs of Oromo and other East African immigrants and refugees living in the neighborhood.

Our literature review explored background characteristics related to positive and negative behaviors among young adults including immigrant and refugee status, exposure to violence and trauma, and parental educational attainment. We found that maintaining cultural identification, higher parental educational attainment, English proficiency, participation in structured programming, strength of peer and family relationships, and involvement with religious organizations all had a positive effect on being civically engaged, achieving higher levels of education, and obtaining employment. A lack of these characteristics along with exposure to violence and trauma as children leads to an increased likelihood of violent and deviant behavior as adults.