Wrap Around Project Awarded $100,000 Support Grant From Everytown Community Safety Fund
10.4.2024
Investment in Community Violence Intervention Initiatives Will Support Trauma-Informed Care and Community Healing Initiatives to Combat Gun Violence in the Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO —Today, the Everytown Community Safety Fund (CSF), part of Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, has announced $100,000 in funding for the Wrap Around Project to advance its work of ending gun violence in San Francisco 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 Wraparound Project works to reduce injury and criminal recidivism in the most vulnerable citizens of the city of San Francisco. It serves as a vital point of entry, providing mentorship and linking clients to essential risk-reduction resources. The Wraparound Project works with people hospitalized at the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG) for a violent injury. The project treats violence like a preventable disease, stopping its spread and amplifying its impact on survivors and the communities survivors live in. Wraparound staff engage survivors during their hospital stays to identify their needs and exposure to drivers of violence to connect them with services – including counseling, conflict mediation, and transportation – to ensure access to support so necessary to breaking the cycle of violence.
“Wraparound Project’s approach to reducing gun violence by engaging survivors of gun violence at their bedside is an evidence based approach that has cut participant re-injury rates in half,” 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. “With this grant, the Everytown Community Safety Fund will increase theWraparound Project’s ability f to deliver emergency support for gun violence survivors, providing access to immediate and essential care, such as food, transportation, clothing, relocation and temporary housing.”
“Our hospital-based violence intervention program, The Wraparound Project, is designed to address violent assault injury among youth and adults in San Francisco, California. We deliver both inpatient and outpatient advocacy and support to survivors of community violence when they enter our hospital for medical treatment after a traumatic injury,” said Dr. Nazsa Baker, Research Director/Program Manager of The Wraparound Project. “This grant from the Everytown Community Safety Fund will help us expand the availability of emergency support funds for gun violence survivors, ensuring their access to immediate and essential care, such as food, transportation, clothing, safe relocation, and temporary rehousing. Resources that are proven to help mitigate cycles of violence and prevent re-injury.”
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.As 18,000 people in the United States die from gun homicides annually, and at least two times more are wounded by nonfatal gun assaults, the violence carries an immense human and economic toll, with survivors facing lifelong physical, emotional, and financial challenges, as well as an increased risk for violent reinjury. Hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs) break this cycle by connecting survivors at their hospital bedsides to violence prevention professionals — staff members with cultural competence, lived experience, and/or expertise in navigating victim and violence prevention services. HVIPs have been seen to be highly effective in preventing re inquiry, with one case study in Baltimore showing participants in HVIPs being six times less likely to be hospitalized for another violent injury two years post–program completion, compared to nonparticipants.
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.