“I am learning how to develop my mind and provide my own opinions. I’m learning how we can help the community and help each other,” said a local high school student of their experience with the social justice education program, the Transforming Justice Hub. The Hub is the newest project based on restorative principles at CORA Good Shepherd Mediation (formerly Good Shepherd Mediation Program), Philadelphia’s oldest community mediation center. 

By integrating popular education pedagogy with community organizing workshops and conflict resolution coaching, the Hub is growing a vanguard of youth leaders and redefining public safety through a lens of racial justice, gender justice, and labor and economic justice. Participants study how systemic issues like food deserts, housing insecurity, low wages, and the prison industrial complex fuel the gun violence epidemic plaguing our city. How bad is this epidemic? According to an article on the website JAMA Network, the risk of injury or death by gunfire among young Black men in Philadelphia’s most dangerous zip code is higher than the risk of injury or death by gunfire among U.S. soldiers in recent wars.