Albert Smith III never gave much thought to the problem of violence in Evanston when he was in high school.

That changed when a gunman opened fire outside his house in southeast Evanston two years ago, wounding a family member. The gunman was never found.

The shooting galvanized Smith. He decided to make a video, titled “Peace by Piece,” for one of his classes at Evanston Township High School, where he was a senior.

“It basically talks about the state of violence in Evanston as of 1999 from a youth perspective,” Smith said. “People use it because it’s a good piece to start discussion on the horror of violence and how people can respond to it.”

Smith received help on his video from Karen Chavers, executive director of the Evanston Neighborhood Conference. ENC is a small grassroots organization that targets issues of housing, public safety and violence prevention.

Ever since then, Smith, now a sophomore at Bradley University in Peoria, has been involved with an ENC project called “Teen Empowerment.”

Teen Empowerment works to promote local youth leadership to combat community problems. Currently the group is producing another educational video, which targets the issue of poor-quality housing.

For the video, Teen Empowerment filmed teenagers talking about their personal experiences with housing issues. Homelessness and other housing issues affect teen-agers more than their peers realize, Chavers said.

“If you live in bad housing, it really affects your life,” said Jerusalem Singleton, a Teen Empowerment member. “No kind of education can come through there.”

The group hopes to release the film early next year, Chavers said.

But the group’s primary mission is to raise awareness of how violence affects teen-agers. Gang-related and domestic violence against young adults are two of the biggest, least addressed issues in Evanston, Chavers said.

Some of the violence in Evanston stems from a lack of activities for young people, Smith said.

He advocates the building of a community center in southeast Evanston, where teen violence rates are high, to give teen-age students a place to go after school.

“Kids are young and very impressionable and when they’re in an environment where there’s violence, they’re going to be influenced,” Smith said. “A lot of kids don’t have anything to do, and they see repeated acts of violence. People are just bound to get into trouble.”

Faith-based organizations also need to do more to guide youth, Smith said. He said he thinks teen-agers respect religious leaders more than other authority figures in the community.

“There is no reason they (religious leaders) shouldn’t be on the street doing their jobs,” Smith said. “I guarantee you that you’ll see a big difference in the community.”

In October, Teen Empowerment tried to do its own part to impact the community. The group held a workshop called “Piecing it Together,” bringing together about 100 teen-agers from the Evanston area to share personal experiences and offer suggestions for combatting violence, said Jeri Love, a Teen Empowerment volunteer.

The group plans to turn the workshop into a series of video forums for next year, Singleton said.

Teen Empowerment also helped produce a 1999 video called “Race Is/Race Ain’t, Class Is/Class Ain’t.” Singleton, who made the film, said the 17-minute presentation addresses racial and class stereotypes.

Teen Empowerment showed the video at a Nov. 1 meeting with Leadership Evanston, a community organization that teaches leadership skills. Singleton said the video has been shown nationwide and abroad.

But Teen Empowerment has faced a lack of diversity among the teens who participate in its events, Singleton said. The students who attended the “Piecing it Together” workshop were predominantly black, she said. Smith said the group has been trying to recruit members from organizations aimed at different backgrounds.

Although he is no longer a teen himself, Smith said he plans to remain active in Teen Empowerment until the group recruits new leaders. He said he is optimistic that teen-agers will be attracted to the anti-violence cause even without a dramatic story like his own acting as a catalyst.

“It takes tragedy to make people move,” he said. “I don’t know if I would have gotten involved otherwise if this hadn’t happened.”