小练习 9.4

Dr Katie Donnelly, an emergency medical physician at National Children's Hospital, likens gun violence to a chronic illness that eventually proves fatal and says it is endemic in parts of Washington DC.

"We have lots of families, who will say to us, every one of my children has been shot, or I still have my bullets in my body or his father was killed on the same street corner where he was shot," she told the BBC.

Katie Donnelly医生是一位在国家儿童医院就职的急救医生。她将枪械暴力比作一种致命的慢性病，并表示它正在侵染华盛顿的部分地区。

“我们遇到过很多会对我们说家里每一个孩子都被射伤过的家长。另外一些人会说，自己身体里还有没取出来的子弹。还有些时候，他的父亲就死在和他们中枪的街角。”她告诉BBC。

Last year, she launched the hospital's first youth violence intervention program. Instead of treating gunshot wounds as isolated incidents, the programme takes that horrific moment in a young person's life and turns it into a starting point for change.

去年，她推出了医院首个青少年暴力干预计划。在该计划中，他们并不把这些年轻人们中枪的创口当作单独的事件来进行治疗，而是将那一整个骇人耸听的瞬间变成他们人生中的转折点。

Yvonne Doerre, a social worker in DC for nearly 30 years, says there are many reasons behind the rise in youth gun violence. Guns are relatively easy to access, but there are also the lingering effects of the pandemic.

"When you go back to when Covid started, these kids were in fifth or sixth grades [ages 10-12], which are very volatile times in people's lives," she says. Without the structure of having to attend school in person, many young teens stopped attending online classes, and even failed to enrol in secondary school when the time came, she says.

在华盛顿工作将近30年之久的社会工作者Yvonne Doerre表示，在青少年枪支暴力背后潜藏着很多因素。当然，枪械很容易拿到手是原因之一，然而这其中还有疫情带来的挥之不去的影响。

”如果把时间倒回新冠疫情开始前，这些孩子正是上5或6年级的年龄（10-12岁）。而这段时间是人生中极为不稳定的时期。“她说。由于不再用亲自到学校参与课堂，许多年轻的少年少女们连网课都不再参加，而这使得一部分人甚至无法在该进入中学的时候去读中学。

"If you enrol then don't show, they'll look for you, but they never enrolled. You're just persona non grata. You don't exist," Ms Doerre says.

Getting youths enrolled and attending schools is one of the programme's key goals, but keeping them in school is not the only consideration. There is also the question of keeping young people caught up in gang violence away from the environment that made them a victim in the first place.

”如果你报了名进入中学但没在学校里出现，他们会来找你。但这些孩子根本没有报名进入中学，那么他们就是不受欢迎的人，根本不存在。“Doerre女士说道。

让青少年报名并到校上课是这个项目的关键目标之一，然而他们要担心的并不只有保证这些孩子们呆在学校里。他们还还需要解决防止青年人被卷入远离这个环境的黑帮暴力，而这恰恰是让这些孩子们成为受害者的根本原因。