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Domestic Violence Prevention in the Arab Youth Community: A Case Study of the Arab American Action Network’s (AAAN’s) Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Evaluation Work with the Robert Wood

Johnson Foundation and LTG Associates, Inc.

Written by Gihad Ali, Hatem Abudayyeh and Carter Roeber

February 2013

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Acknowledgements:

Wendy Yallowitz and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Carter Roeber, Michelle Wilson, Nadya Engler, Alberto Bouroncle, Cathleen Crain, Niel Tashima, Sonya Ross, Terry Redding, and LTG Associates, Inc.

Rasmea Yousef, Halima Bahri, Rania Shkairat, Zahraa Jody, Laila Younes and the

AAAN’s Family Empowerment and Youth Services Programs

Amany Hussein, Widad Hussein, Muhammad Sankari, Aaisha Durr, Nesreen Hasan, Janan Abudayeh, Souhyb Algholeh, Liqa Affaneh, Kareem Youssef and the

AAAN’s Youth Organizing Program

Lamees Talhami, Souzan Naser, Ora Schub, Louise Cainkar, Ahlam Jbara, Laila Farah and the AAAN’s Board of Directors

Local Partners: Nehal Abdallah, Abdel Baset Hamayel, Jameel Karim and Malik

Shaar – Mosque Foundation Community Center; Fatima Abu Eid – SANAD; Father Nicholas Dahdal – St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church; Maha Jarad; Ahmad Mustafa – Orland Park Prayer Center; Sheikh Kifah Mustapha, Aisheh Said and

Sheikh Jamal Said – Mosque Foundation; Camilia Odeh; Nina Shoman-Dajani; and Lena Tlieb - Universal School

National Partners: Haneen Adi – Arab Community Center-Youngstown OH; Shirien

Damra & Mohammad Mashal – Students for Justice in Palestine; Lamis Deek & Dima Abisaab – U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)-NY; Noura Erakat; Lily Haskell, Rama Kased & Lubna Morrar – Arab Resource and Organizing Center-

San Francisco; Ramah Kudaimi; Rasha Mubarak – Arab American Community Center (AACC) of Central Florida; Loubna Qutami – Arab Cultural and Community

Center-San Francisco; Linda Sarsour – Arab American Association of NY; and Nadia Tonova – National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC)

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Domestic Violence Prevention in the Arab Youth Community: A Case Study of the Arab American Action Network’s (AAAN’s) Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Evaluation Work with

the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and LTG Associates, Inc.

I. Introduction This report will study the effectiveness of the Arab American Action Network’s (AAAN’s) “Healthy Relationships” project, which seeks to prevent, and ultimately end, intimate partner violence (IPV) in the Arab community and beyond. In this case study, we will describe our organizational background, the prevention project and all its components, the evaluation of the project, and how the organization benefited from the scientific and systematic evaluation training and support it received over the course of the past three years.

II. Organizational Background The AAAN was established in 1995, by community members and leaders, academics, and business owners, as an organization that Arab Americans and Arab immigrants relied upon for services, social connectedness, and an Arab identity in Chicagoland (the term which describes Chicago proper, plus all of its adjoining suburbs). The founders saw the AAAN as a formal vehicle to develop a coherent Arab American agenda, create programs to address community needs, and reduce barriers to utilizing mainstream services. They were also committed to reducing the social and political isolation experienced by Arab Americans and assisting them in becoming active participants and leaders in American society. It was clear from the beginning that the AAAN would be an inclusive voice to the fill the void left when other Arab community organizations in Chicagoland closed in the early 1990s. Following its mission of community empowerment, initial steps in the development of the AAAN programs included a number of community forums to help determine priority needs. Based on these forums, the AAAN began providing after school programs, domestic violence services, and ESL courses. Volunteers provided case management in a style similar to that in their countries of origin. Later, the AAAN contracted social workers to provide more professionalized services. Two part-time staff worked to develop Youth and Women’s programs through grant writing and networking with other communities. These early services were also supported by volunteers and funded by corporate donations and fundraising from the community. The AAAN also incorporated small community-based programs that had been funded by City of Chicago grants. In addition, one board member was already the director of the Southwest Youth Collaborative (SWYC), and this relationship would prove instrumental in getting initial grants. In 1997, the AAAN undertook a needs assessment of Chicagoland’s Arab American community. This comprehensive study was conducted over two years and led by a board member and three field workers. Entitled "Meeting Community Needs, Building on Community Strengths," the

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report was the topic of discussion for a forum sponsored by Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations and featured in a report of the U.S. Department of Labor, "The Changing Face of the Nation: A Discussion of Race Relations and Immigration." In addition to clearly articulating community needs and serving as a voice against stereotypes externally, the needs assessment was used as a springboard for strategic planning and mainstream fundraising for the AAAN. This led to two strategic planning processes, one in 2002 and another in 2007. The latter revised the AAAN’s mission and vision statements, which now read:

The AAAN strives to strengthen the Arab community in Chicagoland by building its capacity to be an active agent for positive social change. As a grassroots nonprofit, our strategies include providing social services, community organizing, advocacy, education, leadership development, cultural outreach, and forging productive relationships with other communities.

Our vision is for a strong Arab American community, whose members have the power to make decisions about actions and policies that affect their lives, and have access to a range of social, political, cultural, and economic opportunities in a context of equity and social justice.

Located on 63rd Street in southwest Chicago proper, the former heart of the Arab community in Chicagoland, the AAAN was the first Arab organization in the area to address the difficult issue of domestic violence, providing intervention services upon its founding, and initiating a community discourse around prevention as well. All of the founders are progressives, and most have a strong history of organizing for women’s rights, so it is unsurprising that this issue found a home with the AAAN. Since the early 2000s, the concentration of Arab immigrant households has slowly moved farther southwest from 63rd Street, to the suburban areas of Burbank, Bridgeview, Oak Lawn, Hickory Hills, Chicago Ridge, Palos Hills, Palos Heights, Orland Park and Tinley Park, but the socio-economic conditions of the community have not changed drastically. Program participants come from a variety of economic circumstances, but the vast majority are low-income. Based on the AAAN’s aforementioned needs assessment, written by current Board Treasurer Louise Cainkar (one of the foremost researchers on the Arab community in the U.S.), and subsequent studies by her and others, the Arab community on the southwest side of Chicago includes some 30,000 persons. It is characterized largely by two-parent families with an average of four children. About 90 percent of Arab adults on the southwest side are immigrants, and the vast majority of U.S.-born Arabs are children and youth. Sixty-eight percent of Arabs on the southwest side lived at or below the poverty level in 2000, and today the percentage is probably higher. Thirty percent of families interviewed in our needs assessment had no employed member and another 41 percent of families were supported by the wages of clerks in Arab-owned stores—wages with no benefits, insufficient to support a family of six. Also, 66 percent of families interviewed reported receiving some type of public assistance.

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The socio-economic profile of Arab families living on Chicago’s north side and in the suburbs is better. The 2000 median income for north side Arabs was $25,800 and for southwest suburban Arabs, it was $37,000. While less economically vulnerable, Arabs in these communities otherwise describe a similar life experience characterized by instances of discrimination, exclusion, and harassment. Only these internal research studies can help us acquire accurate demographic data about our community, because Arabs in the U.S. are not effectively counted by the U.S. Census Bureau, according to The New Chicago, a book edited by John Patrick Koval (2006). Unlike other minority groups, Arabs are officially considered “white” and are expected to check the Caucasian box on U.S. Census forms. Arabs can be counted on the Census long form’s open-ended ancestry question, but this only goes to 17 percent of homes, so small ethnic groups (like Arabs) tend to be undercounted by this method. This also makes specific data like domestic violence reporting rates and figures on educational levels of adult Arabs, especially immigrants, almost impossible to infer from the Census. Consequently, the AAAN looks to partner organizations like the Arab American Institute (AAI) in Washington, DC, along with a reputable pollster, Zogby International, whose research projects population figures at least three times that of census data. “Reasons for the undercount include the limits of the ancestry question; the effect of the sample methodology on small ethnic groups; and distrust/misunderstanding of government surveys among more recent immigrants. While the 2000 Census accounted for some 1.25 million persons in the U.S. who are of Arabic-speaking origin, our estimates place the population at more than 3.5 million” (aaiusa.org). More specifically, the 2000 Census counted 69,000 Arabs in Illinois, while Zogby and AAI estimated the number to be closer to 220,000, and in greater Chicago as closer to 177,000, the vast majority of whom now reside in the southwest suburbs. Arab Census figures from 2010 have not yet been analyzed by AAI, Zogby, or anyone else. As mentioned earlier, the AAAN has been providing domestic violence intervention and prevention programming since its inception. Named the Family Violence Intervention and Prevention Program (FVIPP), its objectives are to reduce and ultimately end the problem of violence against women and children in the Arab community, and in the community at large; to share best practices with the community and other institutions; and to define the standards of excellence in prevention activities and services to women and girls. And although the major component of the program is direct services to victims/survivors of domestic violence, the prevention component has always been essential. Because the Arab community of Chicagoland is relatively new to the U.S. (the majority are Palestinian, and most of these first arrived here in the late 1960s and early 1970s), the AAAN understood that conflict resolution in the community replicated tried and true methodology from the “old country.” Faith leaders and village elders intervened in crisis situations to resolve general conflicts between individuals, families, and even clans. They were also called upon to prevent the escalation of conflicts and even end violence in homes, especially intimate partner

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violence. These leaders were mostly men, considered above reproach, and their decisions and recommendations were always respected. So these experiences were incorporated into the AAAN’s prevention model, where a coalition of Arab mosques, churches, community organizations, and individual leaders was formed as a public front to promote the prevention of violence. Broad public education and media outreach, as well as prevention workshops developed for, and presented to, the AAAN’s adult education students, Arab Women’s Committee members, and Alliance of Young Women Activists (AYWA) leaders, rounded out the prevention program. The AAAN applied for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “Strengthening What Works (SWW)” grant because mainstream domestic violence programs, which often are not culturally competent and do not have Arabic-speaking or Muslim staff, are not equipped to serve the Arab community. The AAAN had always been working to advance comprehensive violence prevention strategies, and had developed its program to improve proactive responses by community systems, increase public understanding and dialogue about family violence, increase coordination of services, and promote best practices. We believed that what we were doing was working, and we wanted to test this belief by establishing evidence through empirical evaluation. Before receiving RWJF support and beginning to work with LTG Associates, Inc., which was the evaluation consultant contracted by RWJF to work with each SWW grantee (henceforth National Program Office [NPO]), our experience with evaluation was elementary. We conducted regular evaluations of programs and staff, but they were based on general program goals and anecdotal evidence, with no specific measurement tools used. We would also evaluate meetings, events, workshops, and presentations after their completion, again based on general goals. And although we conducted regular surveys of participants across programs, these were ultimately nothing more than “satisfaction surveys.” The evaluability assessment site visit by the NPO and a member of the SWW National Advisory Committee was intensive and extremely beneficial. Three AAAN board members, all of our administrative staff, and a number of our FVIPP staff participated. Although we gave a powerful presentation about our work and what we understood was its effectiveness, it was only through the eyes of NPO staff that we were able to realize how exciting an opportunity this evaluation project would be, to move from practice to evidence. As will be described later, the early work with the NPO and the locally based Project Capacity Consultant (PCC), and lessons learned from the logic model and theory of change, as well as an honest assessment of the AAAN’s overall capacity to evaluate our work, led to an important shift from IPV prevention activities with adult immigrant women to youth.

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III. Studying the AAAN’s IPV Prevention

Launching the Evaluation The AAAN had originally planned to evaluate its IPV prevention workshops with our target population of adult immigrant Arab women, but the staff person responsible for this work left the organization in April of 2010. Consequently, the staff management team of the AAAN and relevant board members, in consultation with the NPO, decided to shift the target group to Arab youth between the ages of 14 and 24. This was not a decision based only on staffing, but also on the fact that we had a much more consistent group of participants attending our regular

“The Qur’an says that women are inferior to men.” “It states that men are the heads of household and can do whatever they want.” “Women are weaker and need the protection of men.” “That’s why we can do things that our sisters can’t, like go out late, hang out with girls, stuff like that.” A number of Arab American male youth, born to Arab Muslim parents but not as understanding about Islam as they are about Arab culture (which is oftentimes confused with Islam), walked in to our first “Healthy Relationships” workshop believing a ton of inaccurate representations of their religion. They may have expected to hear the same from our female facilitator of the workshops, who is the program coordinator, or the other youth staff members, one of whom happens to be male. Instead, they were blindsided with strong and fact-based refutations of their misconceptions. And not only from a religious perspective, but from a progressive, cultural standpoint as well, with young women directly challenging patriarchal views, sexism, and double standards. We had expected some conflict, and passionate discussion, but were surprised that all the youth felt so comfortable voicing their opinions, even when those opinions were in the minority. For weeks and weeks of the piloting of the “Healthy Relationships” curriculum, the same young men kept coming back with the same old, tired clichés. And for weeks and weeks, their arguments were easily defeated. The other fascinating development was the relationships being built. Young Arab Muslim men and young Arab Muslim women were learning to challenge each other intellectually, respectfully, and in friendship. They were becoming as close as siblings, and couldn’t wait to see each other on program days at the “Markaz” (“Center” in Arabic, as the AAAN’s facility is affectionately called). And the program, named Silent Echoes, which was always self-sustaining, continued to grow, with participants recruiting their siblings, cousins, friends from school, and more. “All week, I was looking forward to Friday night and Saturday afternoon to come around,” said Atef (pseudonym for a 15-year-old Arab male program participant), “because the other kids are so cool and the AAAN staff are like older brothers and sisters.” We will meet more youth and describe how they benefited from the program throughout this case study, and also learn more specifically about what happens to the young men quoted above.

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youth development programming than those attending our ESL classes (the base for the adult women target group). In addition, the PCC and NPO played a pivotal role in this decision. The PCC is a long-time friend and supporter of the AAAN, and had worked with us as a consultant on a few projects before SWW. She and the NPO helped us recognize that the aspect of our work that sets us apart, its uniqueness, and what had been “working” for years, is our philosophy in regards to youth development. Years earlier, we had consciously and strategically begun to establish a safe social and political space for young people at the AAAN; not only a physical space, but the figurative space to be themselves, to be comfortable and assured that their opinions would be listened to, taken into consideration, and respected. This space became the second home to dozens of mostly Arab, but also African American and Latino, youth, providing social, political, personal, leadership, and educational development programming with components in creative writing, spoken word and hip hop poetry, grass-roots organizing, civic engagement, and cultural arts. The Youth Organizing Program meets for three terms of 10 weeks each, serving almost 100 duplicated youth per year. These youth gather at the Markaz 8-10 hours a week during the school year, and 25 hours a week in the summer. A portion of these hours are allocated specifically for the IPV prevention project, which we strategically named “Healthy Relationships.” The AAAN’s community organizing initiative combines political education and consciousness-raising with leadership development and hard-skills organizing training. With immigrant women, this is accomplished within the context of our Arab Women’s Committee. With youth, Silent Echoes, the name of our youth organizing initiative, is the vehicle. In the course of a few years prior to SWW, these youth had gained real ownership of the program, growing into legitimate leaders within the AAAN and helping to guide our curriculum, the issues we wanted to organize around, and ultimately, the decision to bring the “Healthy Relationships” project to the organization. Our Youth Organizing Program Coordinator facilitated the transition from curriculum and workshops geared toward adult immigrant women to the beginning of a conversation about developing new curriculum and workshops for mostly Arab youth. She also was the staff member who utilized regular evaluation more than the rest, even though her experience with it was also quite elemental. In 2006, a consultant from the National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC), which the AAAN co-founded, worked with our staff to develop staff and program evaluations based on general workplans and program goals. The instruments developed in that process were survey-type evaluations of staff by their peers and their immediate supervisors, and of programs by the relevant staff. Only a short section

“Before I came to the Markaz and joined the AAAN youth program, I was totally shy and lacked confidence in myself and my abilities,” said Lama (pseudonym for a 15-year-old Arab female), “but after a few months, I began performing in front of dozens of people. My parents were stunned.”

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allowed for comments and any kind of qualitative assessments. The AAAN also attempted to incorporate the concepts of participatory evaluation into the process, interviewing clients, program participants, organizational allies, and other stakeholders as well. As mentioned earlier, although our youth program engaged participants regularly with assessments, these were essentially “satisfaction surveys.” And we also were not yet utilizing strong measurement tools for gauging effectiveness and impact. The loss of that key staff member in April 2010 was an additional challenge to our efforts to build evaluation capacity. The loss of staff and funding cuts meant that our Associate Director had to spend more of her time focused on directly managing our social services department, as opposed to leading organization-wide capacity building, program development, and evaluation efforts. At this time, the AAAN hired a part-time “Healthy Relationships” project coordinator and she, along with the AAAN’s Executive Director, Associate Director, Youth Organizing Program Coordinator, and at times, the Youth Services Program Coordinator and her AmeriCorps intern, constituted the team finalized to evaluate the project. More Staff Changes and Exciting Moves At the end of September 2010, the part-time project coordinator abruptly resigned, but because the base participants for the prevention were now youth, the AAAN made the decision to move the Youth Organizing Program Coordinator, who had already been the person most responsible for recruiting and mobilizing youth for the project, into the position of “Healthy Relationships” project coordinator. At this point, and because of the challenges in retaining staff, the NPO also recommended the formation of an internal AAAN Prevention Project Oversight Committee, to promote more support for the project. Two board members, who have years of experience in domestic violence intervention and prevention work, and had participated in the original evaluability assessment site visit, joined this committee and also participated in one or more NPO site visits during the grant. In retrospect, all would agree that this new coordinator should have been the choice for the position from the beginning. Either way, we ended up with the right person working on the project with the right target group; she received the requisite support from the staff management team and the organization as a whole, and we began moving forward with the project and the evaluation much more confidently.

Developing the Logic Model Since we had no experience utilizing outcome and process indicators in our evaluations, our work on the logic model for this project was painstakingly difficult. Our PCC had used these models in much of her work as a researcher, consultant, and grant writer, so she

“When you’re called upon to provide direct services and manage a program simultaneously, there are naturally some things that will fall by the wayside. In our case, it was scientific evaluation of our work.” – AAAN Youth Organizing Program Coordinator

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and the NPO guided us through the process. The prevention team continued developing the logic model, found additional support from board members, and essentially received intensive training in creating and understanding outcome and process indicators. At the same time, the NPO also led us as we were amending our theory of change, which ultimately read:

“By preparing Arab youth for adulthood, our programs seek to reframe those cultural norms that oftentimes do not recognize IPV. It is expected that participants will gain the necessary skills (leadership, critical thinking, identity and self awareness, conflict resolution, and communication) to be able to understand their cultural identities and develop healthy relationships that may help reduce and prevent the incidence of IPV.” – AAAN IPV Prevention Theory of Change

This prevention model took into consideration what the AAAN felt was a solid premise: that providing knowledge, skills, and experience to young people early enough in their development would help prevent IPV in their futures—young men would then not be perpetrators of violence, and young women would then be able to recognize danger signs and avoid relationships with potential abusers. We also firmly believed that the youth would be able to take what they learned into their homes, their schools, their communities, and their society as a whole—that if there were prevailing cultural norms like non-recognition of IPV as a problem, then these youth and other youth in future iterations of the project would challenge them. So, through the logic model process, we developed our amended prevention project with youth. It consisted of a curriculum with six units of workshops on different issues related to domestic violence and IPV prevention, a social norms survey, and coalition building with other Arab and Muslim stakeholder organizations. The long-term goal of the project, reflected in the logic model, is to reduce IPV in the Arab and Muslim communities of Chicagoland and contribute to the transformation of those communities into ones in which IPV is unacceptable. The specific objectives included increasing the target youth population's knowledge and skills to promote healthy relationships by 20 percent over the baseline, and also increase their knowledge and understanding of IPV, gender-based violence, and domestic violence in their legal, cultural, religious, and social contexts by 50 percent over the baseline. Groundbreaking Curriculum for Arabs In year two of the grant, the AAAN made incredible strides in the implementation of the prevention project. The curriculum, with its units of workshops (facilitated by the new coordinator), short films, discussions, and role playing, was piloted for the new target population of mostly Arab youth between the ages of 14 and 24. The original goal was for six units to be presented over the course of six months, with each unit completed over two sessions per month. Our target number of youth participants for the pilot was 15.

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In finalizing the curriculum for the launch phase in year three, we combined the last two units and ended with five: Conflict Management, Anger Management, Identifying Forms and Signs of Domestic Abuse, Self Discovery & Setting Personal Boundaries, and Social Norms and Arab Relationships: Understanding Culture & Customs. To establish the baseline, we developed a pre-test for each unit of the curriculum. And to ensure confidentiality, pre- and post-test data was then anonymized with a combination of numbers and letters used as code. We also developed a table to assess and observe the participants' level of engagement in discussions and activities. The latter tool aligns with the AAAN's philosophy on youth development work. We believe that if a safe social and political space is provided for youth, they will feel the freedom to be open and engaged, and consequently, better able to gain knowledge and learn. Satisfaction surveys similar to ones we had used previously in the youth program were developed for this project as well. Working with Community Partner We also retained the element of working with other institutions in the community, for although there was not an official violence prevention coalition in place, we have long-standing relationships with mosques, churches, other social service institutions, and individual anti-violence activists who we have brought together for ad hoc formations, community meetings, events, interventions, etc., in the past. Representatives of these institutions were brought together for a focus group. Questions were developed by the AAAN staff with the NPO and the PCC, and the discussion was facilitated by our youth organizing program coordinator. The participants were social services professionals, faith leaders, and youth development staff. Some of the data collected were ultimately used to help develop goals for the project, and even curriculum and workshop ideas. The AAAN also organized focus groups, as well as less-official discussions, with members of the target population, facilitated by the part-time project coordinator. These activities corresponded with the AAAN’s philosophy of grass-roots, community-based organizing, and a youth-led approach to all of our programming. The participants in the focus groups and discussions, and the data culled from them, ultimately helped formulate and finalize the prevention curriculum and workshop ideas.

“You’re going to see, 80% [of abused women] probably, they’re not gonna come [to us] just because they don’t want to be labeled as a domestic violence case…because it needs to be a secret. How do you get to those people?” – Wardia (pseudonym for a 26-year-old female Arab social services professional), focus group participant

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Social Norms of Arab Youth in Relation to Domestic Violence While developing our curriculum, an idea for a social norms survey took flight. In exciting political discussions with the NPO, regarding religion, culture, society, nationalism, family, relationships, and a dozen other topics, it was suggested to us that we should look at a similar survey produced and disseminated by Enlace Comunitario, one of the other seven SWW organizations. We gained permission to use their survey, and the prevention team got to work. One of the main challenges related to a “Healthy Relationships” project in the Arab community is defining what a “relationship” is. Dating is still very much a taboo in Arab homes, whether the family is Muslim or Christian. New immigrants especially are sensitive about their sons and daughters identifying with “American” culture, especially as it relates to relationships with the opposite gender. And our Arab community partners, faith based or otherwise, also needed assurance that we were not “promoting” teen dating. So, we were very careful in the use of language throughout the development of the project, beginning with its name, “Healthy Relationships.” We revised the questions in the survey to make certain that IPV was discussed in the context of relationships between people who were engaged or married, and we also used the same methodology with the workshop curriculum. After cursory work on the first draft of the survey by the full team, the NPO, and the PCC, the project coordinator completed it with two members of Alliance of Young Women Activists (AYWA), which was founded by the coordinator in 2006, and provides social, personal, political, and leadership development programming for Arab and Muslim young women. A survey addressing Arab youth social norms around issues related to IPV had never been attempted previously in this community. In the introduction, we wrote:

“The AAAN’s youth program participants have designed a survey to gather information about youth perception, acceptance, rejection, and experience of domestic violence and abuse in general. This survey is intended to be anonymously completed by Arab American and Arab immigrant youth, between the ages of 14-24 years, living in the United States. Survey findings will be used to increase knowledge about the attitudes around violence and domestic abuse in the Arab community, so that the AAAN, as well as other Arab organizations and practitioners around the country, can better serve the needs of their constituents.”

We then piloted the survey, distributing it electronically through the online vendor SurveyMonkey, relying primarily on the use of social media. Without much formal advertising, close to 200 Arab youth from across the U.S. completed it, using the “snowball sampling” approach of dissemination. Based on the preliminary findings and with support from the NPO and the PCC, the survey was edited, translated into Arabic, and finalized for the official launch (in Arabic and English) in year three of the grant. We made it bi-lingual to ensure that those whose first language is Arabic would be comfortable taking it, but also because we wanted to explore whether those who spent most of their lives in the Arab World had different beliefs

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about domestic violence than those who spent most of their lives in the U.S. And, because of our historical connections with Arab communities and organizations in other parts of the country, especially the 20+ members of the National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC), we decided to make a concerted effort to disseminate the survey beyond the Chicagoland area. Besides NNAAC, the project coordinator and Executive Director also reached out to partners in California, New York/New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, DC, Washington state, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Maryland. Other national networks supported the survey project as well, including U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Muslim Student Association (MSA), and Arab Student Union (ASU) chapters. Directors at NNAAC, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center and the Arab Community and Cultural Center in San Francisco, the Arab Community Center in Youngstown, the Arab American Association of New York, and many others posted the survey, as we did, on Facebook, Twitter, and listserves, which blanketed the country. It was completed by over 300 Arab American and Arab immigrant youth over a six-week period. Collecting, Analyzing, and Interpreting Data The evaluation design for the “Healthy Relationships” workshops and Arab American Youth Social Norms Survey developed over time, and adjusted to new information from the piloting of the workshops. In technical terms, the process was iterative and relied on a mixed method strategy. The evaluation design was a pragmatic reflection of the available resources, as well as the small scale but intensive nature of the interventions. The “Healthy Relationships” units were integrated into an overall youth leadership program strategy. It was possible to capture some data regarding changes in knowledge and attitudes, but it is difficult to determine if the “Healthy Relationships” units were effective outside the context of the youth leadership program. The intent of the evaluation was to use some instruments, such as the pre- and post-tests for the first, third, and fourth units, to assess gains in knowledge and changes in attitudes and beliefs. Other instruments, such as the anger management chart used in the second unit, were designed to help participants reflect upon and apply what they learned in the workshop, as well as provide the facilitator with a more clear understanding of the participants’ experiences. In both cases, the goal was not to focus on outcomes, which would be premature given that the program had just recently been piloted, but instead to gather evidence that would be useful for program improvement.

“Check out this great project from the AAAN in Chicago. Calling on all Arab youth to take this domestic violence survey!” - Twitter post from DC Arab activist

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The “Healthy Relationships” curriculum includes instruction in the areas of leadership development, conflict resolution skills, communication skills, anger management, knowledge of IPV, critical thinking, and identity and self-awareness, amongst others. The data from the project include various measurement tools used for each “Healthy Relationships” unit, the written satisfaction surveys used at the end of every workshop, the online satisfaction surveys used during each semester of the program, the social norms survey, the youth focus group, and the stakeholders’ focus group. Pre- and post-tests were created and used for Unit 1: Conflict Resolution (16 questions), Unit 3: Introduction to Domestic Abuse (10 questions), and Unit 4: Setting Personal Boundaries (16 questions). These tools were administered at the beginning of each unit, before any material was presented. The workshops of each unit were then facilitated over a four-week period. At the close of each unit, the post-tests, which were identical to the pre-tests, were administered. Unit 2: Anger Management used a six-column anger management chart, which participants were asked to complete over a one-week period, documenting specific incidents of anger and their understanding of what caused the anger, responses to the anger, outcomes of the anger, and general observations. Our goal was to increase participants’ scores by 20 percent over the baseline. During the pilot of the curriculum, it was relatively easy to determine whether youth scores on post-tests

increased by 20 percent of their pre-test scores, and most participants scores did. However, as we facilitated each unit more than once, data became skewed, since youth had already participated in the workshops and taken the pre-

and post-tests once before, and for some youth who are regular participants, several times before. Some youth received perfect and close to perfect scores on both the pre- and post tests, resulting in little to no difference over the perceived baseline. At face value, this could indicate that youth did not learn anything from the unit. However, youth stated that participating more than once in the same unit helped them better understand the information and retain knowledge. This was consistent with youth scores. In terms of data, this is an area that needs to be refined so that results are not skewed to indicate that youth who participated more than once did not benefit from the unit. Another challenge we faced was that youth generally did not like taking the pre- and post-tests. They often complained that they did not want to be “in school” and “take tests.” Whereas most youth cooperated, some blindly took the test, not spending any time reading the questions or putting forth any effort. Thus, their scores were low. This became noticeable when some youth completed the tests much quicker than expected. Another indication was the “pattern” of answers on the tests, such as D, C, B, A, D, C, B, A and so on. Since youth faced no consequences for low scores, they sometimes took the tests without trying, and this was often the reason why some pre-test scores were higher than post-test scores. On more than one occasion, youth were removed from the large group setting and asked to re-do their post-tests,

“I never thought I’d be able to talk about relationships with other Arabs.” – Marwan (pseudonym for a 21-year-old Arab male)

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resulting in a great increase in their scores, a clear indication that they did not even try on their first attempts. A third challenge was the collection of a partial data set; for instance, some youth were present for a portion of the unit but not the entirety of it. This meant that youth would take either the pre- or post-test, but not both. Consequently, we could not measure their knowledge gained from that particular unit. These challenges skew data results and make it difficult to measure real increases over the baseline. Future rounds of analyses will have to take into account youth who participate more than once, blindly answer pre- and post-tests, and are absent for part of a unit. For Unit 2: Anger Management, many youth did not follow directions to complete the “Understanding Anger Chart” over a one-week period. This was evident when they returned to the program on the day their anger charts were due and attempted to complete them all on the spot. While it is possible to do, it does not allow youth to truly consider an incident of anger at the moment it occurs, or to reflect on its outcomes adequately. Instead, answers on the charts were rushed and incomplete. Still, even with answers as such, we were able to notice whether youth understood the concepts covered in the unit. What we could not detect was whether youth gained this knowledge during the workshops or whether this was knowledge they already had. In other words, we could not detect any type of increase over their baseline knowledge, since the anger chart, unlike a pre-test, does not account for a baseline at all. This is an area that must be revisited upon future runs of this unit. At the end of every workshop, youth completed a written satisfaction survey to indicate what they liked and disliked about the session. This tool was meant to help the facilitator improve the workshop for future iterations. With the exception of one question that was specific to the content of the workshop, the satisfaction survey was the same for each unit. It included 16 questions about the instructor and workshop content that were answered using the following scale: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. Additionally, the survey included three open-ended questions seeking youth feedback on the workshop. Like the pre- and post-tests, however, youth did not enjoy completing the satisfaction surveys. And we sometimes found that youth were blindly answering the questions on these as well. When asked for comments, youth often wrote vague answers like “nothing,” “everything,” or “good,” but rarely wrote anything thoughtful. What we learned from these surveys, however, is that youth felt they gained knowledge during these workshops and could apply it to their lives. They enjoyed the use of examples specific to the Arab and Muslim community, and felt they could relate to them. What they often critiqued was the length. Although the workshops were limited to one and a half hours each, youth still found this too long.

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They preferred workshops that were one hour from start to finish. However, this was difficult to accomplish since the time allotted had to include 15-20 minutes for youth to complete pre- or post-tests and a satisfaction survey. And since workshops also included an interactive segment, such as a skit, debate, or video analysis, one hour was not enough time. The workshop surveys were meant to seek feedback on each specific session; for the online semester surveys it was feedback on the “Healthy Relationships” project overall. And what we learned from the online surveys at the end of each semester was consistent with the information we gained from the written workshop surveys: youth appreciated Arab-specific examples and could relate to them; found the workshops fun and interactive; liked the facilitator; and found the workshops to be too long. Additionally, youth indicated that they did not like completing “worksheets” (tests and surveys). The First-Ever Arab Youth Social Norms Survey For the Arab American Youth Social Norms Survey, the AAAN collaborated with the NPO to analyze the pilot data and revise the survey so that it could be launched officially. The initial aim of the survey was for the AAAN to better understand its target population. However, during the pilot, it became clear that Arab youth from other parts of the country had accessed the survey through informal networks, and had responded to the survey, resulting in a richer data set than expected. The AAAN, the PCC, and the NPO saw this as an opportunity to learn more about Arab youth attitudes towards domestic violence, healthy relationships, religiosity, and social values more generally, which would conceivably help other Arab community-based organizations around the country. A large piece of our overall data came from this survey. It was interesting that youth from other states had completed the pilot, so in the official launch, we put forth a concerted effort to get these youth to participate once again, and our relationships with Arab organizations in other parts of the country facilitated this. Not only were staff from these other organizations excited to read the survey, they also encouraged their respective youth constituents to complete it. Contrary to what we expected to find, most youth who took the survey had a strong understanding of what constitutes domestic abuse. While we knew that youth would be able to easily identify physical abuse, the prevention team was surprised to learn that most young people who took the survey also recognized signs of emotional, psychological, and financial abuse. For example, when asked if “a husband throws things around the house when he’s arguing with his wife” is abuse, over 70 percent answered yes. Also, when asked if “a working husband refuses to give his stay-at-home wife money for household necessities” is abuse, 83 percent answered yes. Another key finding is that, although the prevention team believed that youth would not want to talk about intimate relationships—and most of the team members themselves, recalling their high school and college-aged years, argued that they would not have supported public

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discussions about it—over 58 percent of the survey respondents agreed or strongly agreed that “there needs to be more conversation about romantic/intimate relationships in [their] community,” while less than 12 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed. We understand that the social norms survey has some limitations; primarily, the use of snowball sampling does not always offer an accurate representation of the target population. More specifically, those who can participate must be referred by those who have already participated, so the sample is exclusive and not random. Additionally, we reached out to youth through organizational networks and student associations, which could mean that youth who participated in the study are likely involved in their community or on campus. As such, these youth may be more exposed to community issues such as IPV and DV, and may have a better understanding of them. Thirdly, since the survey was only disseminated online, the only youth who are able to participate are those who have internet and computer access. And lastly, although we translated the survey into Arabic, we only conducted outreach in English. Analyzing Community Partnerships

For the purposes of this project, we have key community partners on two main levels. The first

includes our Chicagoland stakeholders: leaders of Arab and Muslim institutions across Chicago

and its suburbs. More specifically, we have been working with board members, staff, and

volunteers of institutions like the Mosque Foundation, which has a congregation of several

thousand Arab Muslims who attend services on a weekly basis; the Mosque Foundation

Community Center (MFCC), which specifically targets Arab and Muslim youth in the southwest

suburbs; the Orland Park Prayer Center, which has a congregation of several hundred and also

offers faith-based youth programming; the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago

(CIOGC), an umbrella organization that includes dozens of Islamic organization across Chicago;

and SANAD, a social services agency that supports underserved families on Chicago’s southwest

side.

We have developed ad-hoc coalitional relationships with the aforementioned groups and

others over the years, with the purpose of trying to close the gap in understanding between the

different organizations that are working in the community and are concerned with domestic

violence. We have always felt that these relationships also help build unity around the belief

that domestic violence is a social problem that affects the entire community and not just

individuals, and that we all must work to eradicate it. Lastly, we provide community resources

and service coordination around the issue.

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The second level of community partners includes our national stakeholders. The AAAN is a

founding member organization of the National Network for Arab American Communities

(NNAAC), which currently includes over 20 institutions across a dozen states. We have been

working very closely with several of the NNAAC member organizations, seeing each other

regularly at national conferences and gatherings, and speaking frequently on conference calls.

These organizations played a crucial role in helping us gather data for our social norms survey.

Furthermore, they will play a critical role in helping to implement the “Healthy Relationships”

curriculum in other major cities. And although the AAAN also has long-standing and important

partnerships with non-Arab, non-Muslim institutions within the domestic violence prevention

and intervention landscape, those were not the focus of this project.

In the second year of “Healthy Relationships,” we organized a focus group for our local

community stakeholders. We solicited feedback on our curriculum and project as a whole,

which was extremely positive; and we asked for their buy-in and investment, so that we might

offer our workshops in their respective spaces. The project was well-received by these partners,

and we learned many things during the focus group. Because the majority of the stakeholders

in the focus group were faith leaders, there was a great emphasis on religion and faith-based

approaches to youth work and DV. None of the represented institutionsoffered adequate

measures to address DV. Leaders described that many families would seek counsel from our

faith-based institutions concerning DV issues because they could not turn to mainstream DV

organizations. We also found that people do this work individually, case by case, but not

formalized, and there is not much follow up, structure, or process. Leaders deal with DV issues

as they arise, but the cases are being dealt with by the individual people and not on an

institutional level. On an institutional level, the only work being done was offering religious

sermons to address domestic violence.

We were admittedly surprised to learn that the community leaders who participated in the

focus group shared a similar understanding of various kinds of abuse and DV. While we

expected that they would identify physical and sexual abuse, we did not expect that they would

not only recognize but also strongly condemn other

kinds of abuse, including emotional, psychological,

and financial abuse. They also talked about the cycle

of violence and the effects of violence in the home on

children and youth, as well as the cyclical relationship

between DV against women and DV against children.

There definitely seemed to be a common definition

and understanding of abuse. Parties agreed, based on

“It is essential that organizations and activists across Chicago work together to challenge DV in our community,” expressed Elias (pseudonym for a 72-year-old male community leader), “because it can’t be ended without all of us.”

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their observations, that socio-economic class and level of education are not predictive factors in

DV.

When asked what would prevent youth from being susceptible to DV, leaders spoke of the need

to make sure that Islam was interpreted accurately through proper religious education. Most

agreed that youth do not know enough about their religion (i.e., Islam). And finally, leaders

suggested improved communication and a good relationship between youth and parents would

help prevent DV. Most of the focus group participants work directly with young people and

experience more DV cases involving children than adults.

Difficulties and Challenges The AAAN’s participation in SWW was hampered by two practical realities. The first consisted of the larger funding environment. We typically depend upon a certain amount of state and city funding to run our programs. The Illinois budget deficit, a result of the recession, indicated that there would be across the board cuts in state agencies that would directly affect our financial stability. The fiscal uncertainty did not directly affect the evaluation of the “Healthy Relationships” project, but it did affect our ability to plan adequately and invest the resources necessary to build the project more quickly. The second issue concerned staff turnover. We made a decision to add a new staff person to help with the SWW activities and to build the youth program. After a lengthy search, we selected the person we thought was best qualified for the job. Although the new staff’s credentials and qualifications were never questioned, her particular experiences and skill sets turned out to be a poor fit with our organizational culture. As a result, there was some time and resources that were lost during the search process. But, we were able to bounce back, and the Youth Organizing Program Coordinator, who ultimately was appointed project coordinator, proved to be more than up to the challenge. The AAAN was able to collect pre- and post-tests and other outcome data with relative ease during the two cycles of workshops. In addition, participants responded to the satisfaction

surveys and offered constructive suggestions for how to improve the program. The outcome data from the pre- and post-tests was biased to some extent, due to the fact that some youth participate more than once in the workshops, which is a reflection of the fact that some youth maintain a long-term connection to Silent Echoes, the youth organizing program. It is possible for the project coordinator to filter out the data from repeat participants; however, such efforts are time consuming and would

“Parenting skills in the community are lacking. Either ‘tough love’ is used and is sometimes abusive, or parents do not discipline at all and want to be their child’s best friend. Youth may turn to non-Arab/non-Muslim friends in school to help them address issues at home and often cannot turn to community members.” – Leila (pseudonym for a 52-year-old Arab female social services professional)

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greatly reduce the data set. The biggest challenge for the evaluation of data comes from the fact that the project coordinator’s responsibilities were considerable, making it more difficult to find the additional time to properly analyze and interpret outcome data. We are seeking to address this by finding additional volunteer help from community members. The curriculum has been written and developed in English, so limited-English speakers may have some challenges understanding the workshops, and data collection and analysis will suffer. We believe that the curriculum is replicable, but it would have to be translated for speakers of Arabic, Spanish, and other languages. Earlier, we discussed a table that was developed to assess and observe the participants' level of engagement in discussions and activities, a tool to gauge interest, confidence, body language, eye contact, etc. But it did not prove practical because the project coordinator was not able to complete the table while simultaneously facilitating the workshops and leading the discussions, especially since the number of participating youth was large, between 20 and 30 per session. The analysis of the Arab Youth Social Norms Survey, including the data presented in this report, remains preliminary. The AAAN intends to present the findings to other organizations for purposes of generating discussion about the challenges that Arab youth in the United States are facing, and how we and our sister organizations can best address those challenges. Evaluation Acculturation at the AAAN Through its efforts with the NPO and the PCC, the AAAN has been inspired to work on sustaining the evaluation methodology it has learned over the past three years. We clearly recognize the importance of empirical evaluation data, and see easily how it fits into our other programming. In fact, while developing the logic model, one of our goals included the incorporation and strengthening of evaluation across the organization. The need for institutionalizing evaluation at the AAAN is clear, and we are motivated to make it so, but the challenge is developing the capacity to accomplish it. To sustain the use of evaluation and quality controls in the organization, we will have the project coordinator utilize her knowledge and skills to train the rest of the AAAN’s staff in this methodology, as well as develop evaluation tools with them. Since a number of the rest of the staff, including the Executive Director, Associate Director, Youth Services Program Coordinator, and others, participated in much of this process with the NPO, there is already organizational buy-in and acknowledgement of the benefit of this course of action. Replicating the development of logic models would support us in the evaluations of all our other programs, as well as in the writing of future grant proposals and program or project reports for the community, funders, or internal use.

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The AAAN also plans to collect the finalized evaluation data from the “Healthy Relationships” workshops, complete the analysis of it with the prevention team, and document the findings for internal and external use. Our prevention project and its activities are now stable and finalized, but the curriculum will continue to develop with testing and feedback from the youth and the prevention team. We will also facilitate additional series of workshops with new cohorts of youth, and always collect more evaluation data from the sessions, continually reviewing our evaluation tools in the process. We want to write two reports documenting our work, one with the findings from the evaluation of the workshops and the other, a write-up of the social norms survey process, dissemination, and conclusions. The work on this case study document describes some of these results, but we believe that it will be valuable to publish a much more comprehensive product specifically focused on our findings. We expect that the social norms report, especially, will be disseminated across the country, to the aforementioned partners in NNAAC cities and other institutions, and maybe even in parts of the Arab World. And we also believe that our “Healthy Relationships” workshop curriculum will be attractive to our community partners locally and nationally. It is the first curriculum we have ever written and published ourselves, and we are excited to soon replicate its developmental process across other AAAN programs. The AAAN has always attempted to establish and develop its programming and projects based on the needs of the community. Over the three years of this project, we learned many lessons that guided our work. In developing the curriculum for the workshops, for example, there was a period of time in which we debated the efficacy of incorporating a unit on self-esteem. Many of us inherently felt that it would be extremely difficult to measure self-esteem, and we therefore did not want to include it. But the staff person who brought the idea to us was adamant, and it was only after many weeks of futilely searching for measurement tools that the unit ended up on the cutting room floor. In the past, we would have left it in even if we did not know how to evaluate it, but now we have gained maturity and understand that all of our activities, curricula, etc., must always be evaluable. And we also previously described how important feedback from community partners and project participants, respectively, was in guiding our curriculum development and social norms survey. Although we have spent years developing relevant and collegial relationships with mosques, churches, other community-based organizations, professional institutions, etc., our reaching out to these partners specifically for their feedback on this project will prompt new and inspired Arab community work around IPV prevention. Many have asked for our survey results and are interested in studying our curriculum.

IV. What We’ve Learned and What’s Next The AAAN has benefited greatly from this opportunity afforded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A number of our core staff, as well as some ancillary staff and volunteers, have

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participated in a process, led by the expertise of the NPO and the PCC, in which we learned scientific and systematic evaluation methodology. We now also have a leading staff member, the IPV prevention project coordinator, who is capable of facilitating a similar process of training and development for the rest of the organization’s program teams—to implement and sustain the use of evaluation at the AAAN for the long term. And although it was the NPO that used SPSS quantitative analytic software to help analyze our data, the AAAN’s Associate Director already had some background using the software, so both she and the project coordinator may utilize it again in the future. We have also gained new and important skills in the areas of curriculum writing and development. These skills were developed in parallel with those of evaluation, so workshops, lesson plans, units, and themes were finalized with outcome and process indicators in mind. Curricula, therefore, will no longer be developed in a vacuum, but simultaneously with measurement tools that support our work’s progression from practice to evidence. It would take years to fully evaluate the efficacy of this prevention project, whether the facilitation of a series of healthy relationships workshops will ultimately end IPV in the Arab community and beyond. But we clearly found that skills, knowledge, and experience were gained by the youth; and that the overall process also reinforced the prevention project itself, and the AAAN as a whole, ensuring the incorporation of a strength-based approach to our work. Although we understand that it would be difficult to establish a causal relationship between the prevention of IPV and participation in the AAAN’s “Healthy Relationships” project, it would be fascinating to interview and survey these youth 5 and 10 years from now. The AAAN would also like to explore shifts in youth attitudes and behaviors as they relate to IPV from the time they begin the project until the time they successfully complete all of the units. And lastly, we want to gauge the influence that the participating youth have on their families and communities. Before this evaluation project, the AAAN was known in some Arab circles in Chicagoland and beyond for its IPV prevention, but RWJF has helped project our work beyond the ethnic framework. We have had the opportunity to meet experts in the field on the national level, from academics and advocates to government agency representatives and service providers. As mentioned previously, there have already been discussions with our partners in regards to the sharing of our prevention products (survey and curriculum), and interest in our analysis and conclusions. Our intentions are to participate in a national DV conference for the Arab community next year (2013) in Dearborn, MI, with ACCESS, the largest Arab social service organization in the country; establish a closer relationship with the Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence; and work with others who may want to replicate this prevention project in other states. And although the project has obviously been developed for an Arab youth base, African American and Latino youth have also been beneficiaries over the past three years, so we believe that the project and some of its evaluation findings can be replicated and studied in those communities as well.

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And what about those Arab American young men who made those crude statements in early “Healthy Relationships” workshops?

“Strengthening What Works” has been a transformative experience for the AAAN as an organization, for its project participants, and in the future, we believe, for the community as a whole. This project has helped to re-establish a culture in the Arab community of challenging some social norms, opening up and talking about difficult issues publicly, and promoting the development of Arab youth into the leadership of IPV and DV prevention work.

— End —

“Man, we didn’t wanna hear nothin’ about equality or anger management or conflict resolution or whatever,” said Hasan (pseudonym for a 19-year-old Arab male). “But after being at the Markaz for a few months, I realized that I had to respect everyone there, including the girls. I think my attitude was really messed up, but I’m doing better now. I’m even letting my little sister hang out with me sometimes.”