Reaching people most affected by violence means being a part of neighborhoods where violence exists and reaching out to likely victims and shooters to defuse tensions.
It doesn’t stop there for the organizations that PSPC supports. Communities Partnering 4 Peace and READI Chicago use innovative methods — hiring neighborhood residents who have been touched by violence to visit violence-involved residents in jail and at hospitals to de-escalate situations and direct them to mental health services, family aid, legal assistance, job training and GED classes.
It’s long-term, labor-intensive work, and CP4P and READI go beyond that threshold:
CP4P (Communities Partnering 4 Peace), a program of Metropolitan Family Services, also is professionalizing outreach work. An umbrella group of 15 community organizations on the South and West Sides, CP4P runs the Metropolitan Peace Academy. This innovative program attends to violence-involved residents’ emotional states along with the trauma they’ve experienced, the upheaval at home they contend with, and the unforgiving society at large. In the Peace Academy, outreach workers receive a standardized curriculum in collaboration with experts and academics to learn about de-escalation and transformation. The Peace Academy, which standardizes the training for street outreach workers across Chicago, will soon provide an academic credential, and provides a career ladder for people who face many barriers to legal employment.
READI Chicago, a program of the Heartland Alliance, uses its relationships with law enforcement and outreach organizations, as well as data analyzed by the University of Chicago Crime Lab to identify residents at risk of suffering or committing violence. READI Chicago recruits individuals into its program that provides social, emotional and job readiness support to place program participants in permanent, full-time jobs with private employers at a targeted starting wage of $12-$15/hour.