An eight-week course at Alliant Universitycalled the Community Mentors Program is trying to help.
"We knew that if this work was ever going to be respected, ever going to be valued to the degree that it should have been valued at, we were going to have to create a professional standard," said Aquil Basheer, one of the course instructors. "We were going to have to create professional protocols."
Basheer began helping street outreach workers professionalize their work some 20 years ago when he founded the Professional Community Intervention Training Institute International. He has trained community members and agencies working to reduce street violence in dozens of U.S. cities. Basheer's trainees play a vital role in gang intervention in Los Angeles and Orange County, where elected officials have more formally incorporated street outreach into their efforts.
One goal of the course at Alliant is to get that ball rolling in San Diego.
That means "getting people to speak the same language," said Basheer. The Community Mentors Program brings together people interested in outreach work, future and current service providers, academic researchers and law enforcement to find common ground and build competencies together.
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