Founded in 1990, WalkBoston is the first organization in America dedicated to using civic engagement as a method for making communities safer and more walkable for pedestrians.  With a combination of effective advocacy, educational outreach, and community programs, it serves as a model for other pedestrian advocacy organizations across the nation.

Some of WalkBoston's numerous achievements include:

• Central Artery: Spearheaded the effort that created a pedestrian-friendly design above the Central Artery — wide sidewalks, more green space, bicycle accommodation and narrow lanes.
• Greenway Sidewalks: Used the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act [MEPA] to successfully challenge a developer’s plan to use the public sidewalk for vehicles. MEPA’s decision preserved a sidewalk and led to an ongoing public review of all sidewalk impacts.
• America Walks: Co-founded national coalition of 50 pedestrian groups in 1996. Members are autonomous grassroots organizations working to improve walking conditions in their area.

StreetSafe Boston is taking a new multifaceted approach to addressing the problem of youth violence.  It is combining the efforts of established social service agencies with teams of highly trained street workers who will seek out and engage at-risk youth.  The task force of street workers will help the youth to make safer choices and access the public and private resources they need, while the network of social service agencies will expand their hours of operation to meet the challenge.  Approximately 2,000 youth, aged 16 to 24, in five Boston neighborhoods are targeted for the program.  A coalition of agencies and funding partners give the StreetSafe Program its breadth and street credibility:

• Youth engagement street works will be managed by the Boston TenPoint Coalition, which is an ecumenical group of clergy and lay leaders working to address issues affecting Black and Latino youth.
• Funding for the expanded social service operations is made possible by a partnership lead by The Boston Foundation. 

Roxbury Youthworks, Inc. (RYI), is a community-based nonprofit organization that addresses the roots of juvenile delinquency in the inner city neighborhoods of Boston by providing cutting-edge support services to court-involved and other youth up to 21 years of age. While a number of programs focus on court-involved young men, few had focused on rising rates of violence and prostitution among young women. Roxbury Youthworks created a model program for young women later adopted as state policy. In 2005, it renewed a $1.2 million dollar contract with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) for all of Boston's Community Re-Entry Centers (CRCs). Highlights include:

• The Still We Rise Building - an all-female youth programming center and home to the Female Focus Initiative and A Way Back program.
• The Edge Program - provide adolescents (and their families) involved with the Department of Social Services (DSS) with advocacy, mediation with the court system, and innovative center-based groups
• Juvenile Court Clinic - serve as clinical investigators
• Community Re-entry Centers (CRC) - work with youth transitioning from secure treatment facilities and residential placements to their home in the communities
  

Improving safety with voice-activated police cruiser

One Appleton Street, 4th floor
Boston, MA 02116-5223
(617) 437-1500
www.jointogether.org

Originally a project of the Boston University’s School of Public Health, Join Together Online (JTO) pioneered the use of the internet to support people in communities across the nation working to reduce substance abuse and gun violence, providing free Internet access to support their efforts. Every month, three-quarters of a million JTO web pages are viewed by more than 350,000 people—subscribers to its e-mail news services and visitors to websites in its syndication network. Initiatives include:

• QuitNet is used to quit smoking. In 2005, more than 1.3 million individuals visited Quitnet.com and more than 100,000 used the program to help themselves quit
• Alcohol Screen is a free and anonymous online alcohol screening program that uses a scientifically validated set of 12 questions to measure the health consequences of an individual’s drinking pattern, with detailed feedback. More than 400,000 individuals have completed this screen.
• Demand Treatment! Partnership supports science-driven strategies in 27 US communities to help them develop screening programs in health settings, expand access to treatment, increase funding for screening and treatment, and understand insurance coverage.

Master Chef Jeff Henderson knows something about the power of cooking to transform lives.  It transformed his.  A former felon who spent ten years in jail, Jeff Henderson is setting a precedent in demonstrating that culinary arts can turn around the lives of at-risk youth, empowering them with the knowledge, the skills and, ultimately, the opportunity for a new life with a culinary career. His show for The Food Network, The Chef Jeff Project, follows the path of six at-risk youth whom he mentors and puts to work at his upscale catering company, Posh Urban Cuisine in Los Vegas.  Other at-risk youth engagement programs have used cooking as part of a remediation effort, but never has a former felon turned master chef been at the helm and in the midst of a national televised campaign.

In addition to supporting at-risk youth, The Chef Jeff Project has provided culinary arts scholarships to youngsters who want to advance their lives, whatever their hardship.  One such winner, Mical Tachel Terry of Jonesboro, Georgia (pictured above) has cerebral palsy and is looking forward to having her culinary degree provide her with a sense of pride and purpose.

In the aftermath of the devastating Pacific Ocean tsunamis of December 2004 that left scores drowned in Indonesia, Thailand, and Southeast Asia, authorities knew they had to raise the bar on tsunami detection and alert - and they have.  The Pacific Tsunami Warning System operated by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has since creating a new standard by significantly expanding it technical capabilities and geographic reach. In 2008, they completed installation of the first oceanic network of automated tsunami detection buoys which can sense the presence of these monster waves while they are still far out at sea.  Warnings are relayed via satellite in time for evacuation.

• The network of these buoys, referred to as DART stations, for "Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami", now form the cornerstone of the Tsunami Warning System.
• Other components of the warning system include seismic recorders, tide gages, forecast models, and emergency communication channels on geosynchronous satellites. 
• Almost every Pacific Rim country is now covered by the warning system. 

Homeboy Industries is quickly being recognized as the country's leading and most industrious gang-intervention program.  It uniquely combines an extensive suite of organizationally owned and run businesses with a wide variety of rehab services, such as counseling, job training, and tattoo removal.  The organization's initial business, Homeboy Bakery, was a venture in getting rival gang members to work together in the management of a business.  Its success has since spawned numerous other enterprises including Homeboy Silkscreen, Homeboy Maintenance, Homeboy/Homegirl Merchandise, and Homegirl Cafe.  Today Homeboy Industries is actively involved in training ex-gang members for 'Green Collar" jobs such as solar panel installation.

Enabling criminal justice reform and lowering costs through greener living

The Sentencing Project is changing the way Americans think about punishment.  It does this by publicizing often overlooked statistics on disparities in the justice system and working for fair and effective reforms in sentencing law and practice, and alternatives to incarceration. The primary advocacy focuses of The Sentencing Project are sentencing policy, incarceration, racial disparity, felony disenfranchisement, drug policy, collateral consequences, and women in the justice system.  Some of the organizations findings are as follows:

• Changes in sentencing law and policy, not increases in crime rates, explain most of the five-fold increase in the national prison population.
• The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails.
• Two-thirds of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities.
• More than 5 million Americans are denied the right to vote due to felony convictions.

Electric Radio Brixton is an award winning radio program in the United Kingdom produced by prison inmates and is heralded for its progressive approach to criminal reform through creativity and artistic expression. The program is run by the Prison Radio Association and is broadcast to 800 inmates.  Programs include music, plus sober discussion on a range of subjects germane to the prisoners, such as self-harming, mental and sexual health, and the prison environment. The mixture of education and communications experience contributes significantly to the ability to persuade prisoners to access services that are linked to their resettlement and therefore to reducing crime.  Launched in 2007, the program has already received worldwide attention and has been the recipient of awards for journalism.