Embracing Change

Message From the President and CEO

By Alfonso E. Lenhardt, President and CEO

Change is all around us. If it isn’t the rapidly evolving technology that constantly brings us new ways to communicate and be informed and entertained, then it is popular culture that changes so rapidly in so many ways that it leaves some of us bewildered. It is an immutable law that change is constant, and, if we embrace it and take advantage of it, we will be the better for it.  That applies to a nonprofit organization in Chicago that Lori Brittain has written about in this issue of Catalyst. There, teens participating in a nonprofit group called Totally Positive Productions, Inc., (TPP) are using the hip-hop medium to interpret NCPC’s Community Works curriculum and bring its message to a much larger audience in the neighborhood.

Change is almost always beneficial. How many teens would Community Works reach in TPP’s inner city Chicago neighborhood it if weren’t for hip-hop? We must be careful, however, when we talk of change: It must be measured, well thought out, and applied in a thoughtful process. Change presents new opportunities, but it presents new responsibilities as well. It must be responsibly applied, and change for the sake of change, for the sake of appearances, is a game that must be avoided at all costs.

Change is constant, and it drives our lives. The media bombard us with images of new lifestyles, and, if we are inclined, we make a choice and transform some aspect of our lives. Similarly, we must choose the right method to solve—or prevent—the new types of crime that emerge every day. TPP has made its choice, and apparently it is the right one for them.

Sometimes we find ourselves reacting to change, not anticipating it. But we must harbor our energy and focus it on staying ahead of the curve. We must know how crime is affecting us. We must anticipate new types of crime, not just react to them. We must always keep an eye to the future as we work in the present. We must monitor crime trends and predict what’s coming next. We must proceed with speed. Only then can we truly design the state-of-the-art programs and curricula and provide the valuable resources that the public and those in the crime prevention field have come to expect from us. Only then can we truly serve America as its center of excellence for crime prevention.

Community Works is aimed at broad audiences of youth. It teaches them about such topics as dating violence, guns, and gangs. With its bold new hip-hop interpretation, Totally Positive Productions has ensured that it can serve even hard-to-reach teens. It is an experiment that has embraced change—and appears to have all the hallmarks of success.