Center For Hope To Receive $100,000 Support Grant From Everytown Community Safety Fund
10.4.2024
Historic Investment in Community Violence Intervention Initiatives Will Support Street Outreach and Community Healing Initiatives to Combat Gun Violence in Baltimore
BALTIMORE — Today, the Everytown Community Safety Fund (CSF), part of Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, has announced $100,000 in funding for Center for Hope to advance its work of ending gun violence in Baltimore and better position the organization to access federal funding. This grant is part of Everytown Community Safety Fund’s more than $2 million investment in 20 gun violence intervention organizations nationwide announced today. The Everytown Community Safety Fund (CSF), a program of Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, is the largest national initiative solely dedicated to fueling the life-saving work of community-based violence intervention organizations in cities nationwide.
According to the U.S. Surgeon General, a public health approach to gun related injury and violence prevention requires immediate “investments in community‑based interventions and educational programs.” The Center for Hope – Community Violence Intervention (CVI) Safe Streets Program uses evidence-informed strategies to reduce violence through tailored community-centered initiatives. These multidisciplinary strategies engage individuals and groups to prevent and disrupt cycles of violence, escalation and retaliation, and to establish relationships between individuals and community assets to deliver services that save lives, address trauma, provide opportunity, and improve the physical, social, and economic conditions that drive violence.
“LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope is a core piece of our city’s violence prevention apparatus,” said Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “As one of the service providers for Baltimore’s Safe Streets program, Lifebridge’s Center for Hope has helped ensure violence intervention work in Baltimore has played a crucial role in making our neighborhoods safer. The progress we’re making in addressing violence our neighborhoods would not be possible without the hard work, credibility, and necessary relationships that our Safe Streets workers bring to this effort. Their dedication to preventing potentially violent conflicts through mediation before they spiral out of control is critically important and I am grateful Everytown is acknowledging – and helping to fund – their important work.”
“Center for Hope’s Safe Streets sites use an evidence-based violence intervention strategy to directly engage the people and places most impacted by gun violence, delivering holistic support to survivors while intervening in conflicts to save lives,” said Michael-Sean Spence, managing director of Community Safety Initiatives at Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund and creator of the Everytown Community Safety Fund. “The Everytown Community Safety Fund is proud to continue our support of the Center for Hope with a new grant to sustain their direct support services to survivors and enhance their staff development through additional training and technical assistance.”
“At LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope, we use community-based violence intervention and prevention initiatives to break the cycle of violence in Baltimore. Our theory of change is grounded in a relationship-based approach,” said Adam Rosenburg, executive director of the Center for Hope. “This grant from the Everytown Community Safety Fund will enable us to expand our therapeutic program for our staff to ensure their access to support and enhanced wellness. Our therapists will provide trauma-based alternative therapies for Safe Streets and hospital responder staff, as well as work with our program participants to help them overcome personal traumas that deeply affect their work.”
Since 2019, the Everytown Community Safety Fund (CSF) has granted over $13 million in support of 136 community-based violence intervention organizations implementing promising strategies, like street outreach, hospital-based violence interventions and youth development and counseling, in more than 69 American cities. This latest round of support grants, currently CSF’s largest grant offering, will provide grant recipients $100,000, in two disbursements over two years, as well as access to CSF’s quarterly calls, peer convenings, capacity-building trainers, national conferences, as well as support from Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and its grassroots networks Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, and national partners.
The full list of community-based violence intervention organizations currently supported by the Everytown Community Safety Fund and more information about the fund can be found here.
Gun homicide has significantly declined in cities across the nation from a post-pandemic spike — due in part to the scaling and city coordination efforts with community based violence intervention organizations working on the frontlines of the gun violence epidemic in cities across the country. And though local communities have seen a reduction in gun violence, data shows that gun homicide rates in the U.S. are still 26 times higher than in other developed countries. In the United States, every day, more than 120 Americans are killed with guns and more than 200 are shot and wounded.
About the Everytown Community Safety Fund
Everytown Community Safety Fund, a program of Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, is the largest national initiative solely dedicated to fueling the life-saving work of community-based violence intervention organizations in cities nationwide. Since 2019, the Everytown Community Safety Fund has granted over $13 million in support of 136 community-based violence intervention organizations implementing promising strategies, like street outreach, hospital-based violence interventions and youth development and counseling, in more than 69 American cities.
About the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund
Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country with nearly 10 million supporters. The Everytown Support Fund seeks to improve our understanding of the causes of gun violence and help to reduce it by conducting groundbreaking original research, developing evidence-based policies, communicating this knowledge to the American public, and advancing gun safety and gun violence prevention in communities. Learn more at www.everytownsupportfund.org.