On today’s show, we’re continuing our conversations about community safety. It’s a pressing issue in the Cape Fear Region — it’s also one of the four key pillars of the New Hanover Community Endowment. The Endowment still hasn’t hired a dedicated network officer to help convene non-profits and public figures on the issue – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of people invested in the issue. This year, I’ll be sitting down with as many of those people as I can.
That definitely includes today’s guest, Abdul Hafeedh Bin Abdullah — or, as most people call him to keep it simple, Abdullah. He’s the founder and director of Sokoto House, and co-founder of Quality Life Blueprint, a community organization that takes a public health approach to violence — which understands the visceral violence of guns, crime, and drugs, in terms of the underlying systemic violence of inequality, trauma, and other factors.
Abdullah agreed to sit down to talk about his perspective on community violence in Wilmington, his approach to it, and where past efforts — like Tru Colors and Port City United — might have fallen short.
Links:
- Quality Life Blueprint
- Sokoto House
- Sokoto House graduates inaugural class of community health workers (WHQR)
- Paper on Community Health Workers
- Community Health Workers in Buncombe County
- Cocaine, Conspiracy Theories, and the CIA in Central America (FRONTLINE)
- The Newsroom: A conversation with District Attorney Jason Smith about community safety