A Proposal for Decreasing Youth Violence By Addressing the Emotional Needs of Our Families and Community   How do we stop the outrage of violence and despair in our schools and our communities? Healing broken spirits is where we can start. Research that calls for a Religious influence: Presenting at the conference Religious Practice and Civic Life: What the Research Says, held earlier this month in Arlington, VA, Drs. Johnson, and Jang reported findings from a study funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention on the role religion plays in prosocial youth behavior. The findings indicate that religiosity during adolescence and early adulthood strengthens protective factors and weakens risk factors that promote drug use. Other studies presented at the conference noted similar findings. Dr. John Wallace, Associate Professor of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh, reported that the higher students’ level of religiosity, the less likely they are to binge drink or use marijuana, while Dr. Scott A. Desmond, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Purdue University, and colleagues, reported that adolescents’ religiosity had a significant positive association with self control, and both religion and self control are related to fewer delinquent behaviors such as marijuana and alcohol use. Our communities are crumbling from acts of violence and disasters; and emotions are out of control.  My desire is to help train families and community leaders who are concerned with the breakdown of our communities to gain skills for aiding individuals to focus, or refocus on positive change.                              Where do we begin? Please allow me to introduce you to CARE JOY. INC., providing a Religious based seminar series of workshops entitled "Social Educational Services." These services were developed as a seminar of training workshops for the enhancement of interpersonal skill development within our families (parents and youth) and their connections in their communities.   The Social Educational Services (SES) can address ways for dealing with the issues of anger and disappointments that lead to substance abuse and violence. Social skill training is provided through workshops that focus on Positive Proactive Communication Skills through Religious base principles. Parents become involve in understanding effective ways to connect with their children and ways to resolve conflicts through role-playing and process discussions. The Social Educational process assists individuals to find the healing for their emotional pains, then, assists them to move out of the pain into positive life choices. Understanding the healing process provides positive alternative responses to emotional trauma.   The Social Educational Services seminars provide instruction and information in a non-threatening manner to help people realize their issues about losses, and to initiate the process of healing from the pains in distressed lives. As we are well aware, the communities of south and central Florida have been impacted with great losses.     Initial steps for bringing Social Educational Services into our Communities: 1.     Provide the Administrative Staff with overview of the Social Educational Services seminar presentations. * 2.     Provide Community supporter with a presentation that includes an overview of the Social Educational focus and an explanation of the sponsorship exposure (Adds in workbooks). 3.     Conduct the “Assessment Emotional Needs in our Communities” survey with the area supporters ** 4.     Hold an Informational session for the community to explaining the Social Educational Training focus through a mini-workshop on one of the chosen topics. Conduct a survey with parents/adults in attendance. Offer a registration for Social Educational Training Sessions for the community.*** 5.     Conduct a twelve-week series of group sessions with parents on desired information topics.   Expected Outcome: The goal is to provide positive interpersonal skills; techniques for moving forward by turning what has been frustrating into positive leadership rolls, helping others in our families and communities to make positive choices. Through the Social Educational Services, participants will learn how to choose positive alternative for dealing with life's losses and will develop strong positive proactive leadership skills to use within their homes and communities. Learning to change the focus of our lives can take time, healing takes time. Those willing to work through the issues that have caused the pain must be committed to change. Measurement tool: A pre-test and a post-test with skill response assessments will serve as tools for performing an informed qualitative research of the process for validation of: interest for seeing change, personal involvement, and proactive techniques for promoting change.