FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 29, 2000

Contact:

Jessica Rothhaar, i.e. communications (415) 616-3930

Diego de la Garza, TCWF (818) 715-1978

VIOLENCE PREVENTION LEADERS RECEIVE
THE 2000 CALIFORNIA PEACE PRIZE AWARD

Father Gregory Boyle, Gianna Tran and Matt Sanchez
Are Awarded $25,000 Each for Their Violence Prevention Work

Los Angeles – The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) presented its annual California Peace Prize Award to three dedicated violence prevention advocates. The honorees are Father Gregory Boyle of Los Angeles, Gianna Tran of Oakland and Matt Sanchez of Santa Barbara. Each received $25,000 in recognition of their work and achievements at a ceremony in Sacramento on Friday, December 1.

"Violence is a public health problem that takes the lives of our youth and brings despair to entire communities," said Gary L. Yates, TCWF president and CEO. "These leaders recognize that violence against youth can be prevented through hard work and commitment. They use their time to immunize young people against violence and restore hope to their lives."

Each of this year’s awardees pays special attention to working with youth who run the greatest risk of becoming victims of violence. Boyle created a jobs training and referral program to successfully lead youth away from gang-related activities. Tran is a youth social worker who is also a strong advocate for the community health approach to violence prevention in Oakland’s Southeast Asian community. Sanchez started a volunteer organization to help at-risk youth build leadership and conflict resolution skills through mentoring.

"The youth look to these leaders for inspiration as role models," said Tawnya N. Lewis, TCWF program officer. "These three advocates create healthier communities by helping young people develop the tools needed for solving problems and avoiding violence. The California Peace Prize recognizes their tireless work and ability to prevent violence against youth."

Father Gregory Boyle

Advancing his motto, "nothing stops a bullet like a job," Boyle encourages youth to join the workforce. Disenchanted by local employers’ reluctance to hire gang-affiliated youth, Boyle founded Jobs for a Future/Homeboy Industries, a jobs training and referral program that includes services such as tattoo removal. The program is home to five businesses including a silk-screening business, an artesania (craft work) production group, a cleaning service, a landscaping service and a merchandising operation for custom T-shirts and other products.

The Jesuit priest previously headed the Boyle Heights parish, considered the poorest area in the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Boyle said. The neighborhood is home to 60 gangs and 10,000 gang members – the highest density in the city.

In addition to running Jobs for a Future, Boyle has worked to improve the lives of the predominantly Latino neighborhood by providing day care, after-school leadership and mentoring programs and an alternative school for gang-affiliated youth.

Boyle said he recently attended the burial of the 86th victim of fatal gang violence in his neighborhood. Some of the victims had been gang members who knowingly walked into death by entering rival gangs’ neighborhoods.

"They understood what the consequences would be," he said. "The problem is not that kids aren’t scared enough, it’s that kids aren’t hopeful enough."

Gianna Tran

At age 12, Gianna Tran and her family left Vietnam seeking refuge in the United States. Tran quickly learned that violence was not a problem unique to Vietnam’s war zones. She began working with juvenile probationers as a social worker in 1988 at the East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC). Today she is an associate director at EBAYC and has helped transform the organization into a multicultural center, providing services in 12 languages to improve the health of youth throughout the area’s diverse neighborhoods.

Tran uses her professional training as well as her personal experience to develop strong youth leadership and create community models for preventing violence against youth. In addition to her work at EBAYC, Tran’s advocacy on mental health and drug, alcohol and physical abuse issues has helped to create what she said is an understanding that violence prevention builds the health of entire communities.

"Violence takes many shapes and forms and comes in many different ways," Tran said. "For the people in the Vietnamese community, the immediate perspective is the war. They see it as an individual family problem, not as a community problem. To compare it to a preventable disease may be something very new to immigrants, but I think that’s the best way to make people understand that it is a serious thing."

Tran’s idyllic community is one where the services offered at EBAYC would be unnecessary. She said she would like to help create a truly healthy community by developing the ability of young men and women to lead others in violence prevention.

Matt Sanchez

Santa Barbara native Matt Sanchez is known for leadership. Although he leads several gang prevention initiatives today, he once led the Varrio Hoods Gang. After watching his own children emulate gang members, Sanchez had a dramatic change of heart. In 1991, he turned his life around and made a commitment to community service.

The first violence prevention event Sanchez organized was a peace negotiation among local gang leaders in the guise of a barbecue get-together. The local police told him it was risky and dangerous and that a positive outcome would be impossible. However, the meeting was successful, and Sanchez has continued taking risks, inspiring youth to lead healthy, peaceful lives

His efforts have led to the creation of Hoods in the Woods. This prevention program brings together rival gang members and at-risk youth through camping excursions with trained mentors. Individuals learn to build self-esteem and participate in an intensive series of workshops and training on issues such as conflict resolution and anger management.

"Too often we want to lecture to kids," Sanchez said. "Sometimes we need to listen, not lecture." Sanchez runs a barbershop, working side by side with his father, which he said gives him the flexibility to devote long days to volunteer activities. He has an office at the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Barbara, where a group of youth and their mentors – called Mi Gente/All 4 One, meets to discuss issues and plan outings. He also keeps regular hours at Zona Seca, a drug and alcohol abuse prevention agency. Sanchez said his greatest reward is seeing youth leave gangs and focus on doing the right things in life, such as growing up to be responsible fathers and raise healthy families where violence has no role.

"These three Californians have made a positive difference in the lives of youth confronted by violence," Yates said. "Their efforts to treat violence as a preventable public health issue have made a real difference in people’s lives. We at The California Wellness Foundation hope others take note of their methods and follow their lead to make violence against our young people a less common occurrence."

The California Peace Prize is awarded by the Foundation as a part of its 10-year, $60 million Violence Prevention Initiative. TCWF is an independent, private foundation created in 1992, with a mission to improve the health of the people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness education and disease prevention. The Foundation provides long-term funding in five priority areas: community health, population health improvement, teenage pregnancy prevention, violence prevention and work and health. It also provides health-related funding through a Special Projects Fund and General Grants program. TCWF has awarded 2,024 grants totaling nearly $295.3 million since 1992.

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Note to reporters & editors: "The" in The California Wellness Foundation name is part of the Foundation’s legal name. Please do not drop or put the "T" in lowercase.