Narrator:
As WestEd commemorates 60 years of supporting thriving learners and empowered communities, we asked our staff and board members to reflect on our history and look ahead to our future. Describe one of your proudest accomplishments here at WestEd.
Trevor Fronius, Director, Justice and Prevention, WestEd:
For more than a decade, I was part of an evaluation team working alongside Massachusetts to evaluate the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative. SSYI is a community-based violence prevention program targeting older youth, 14 to 24 years old, who are at the highest risk for gun violence in their communities.
In 2014, I had the privilege to hear the then-Governor Deval Patrick give remarks about the impact that SSYI was having across the 11 cities who were funded to do this work, and that included citing some of the analyses that I had done as part of the evaluation.
I saw program participants standing alongside the governor, and it helped me understand that the work and the data analysis that I was doing behind the scenes at that time really had a lasting impact and effect on those young people and the communities that they live in.