Cleveland Thrive Violence Prevention Blueprint

In 2022, the City of Cleveland received a federal Department of Justice grant to implement the Cleveland Thrive program – a program designed to prevent and reduce violent crime in the City; particularly around youth violence, gun violence, and violence against women and girls as articulated on Mayor Justin M. Bibb’s website at https://mayor.clevelandohio.gov/initiatives/violence-prevention-strategy . This grant brings together a cross-sector team of leadership partners who are charged with accomplishing three goals: Leveraging national, state and local resources to coordinate community violence interventions throughout the City focusing on a footprint of high-violence neighborhoods Building a blueprint to address violence, ensuring that individual community violence intervention programs/practitioners are able to meaningfully contribute to the overall violence reduction goals of the City that centers resident voice and focus on targeted neighborhoods Funding existing exemplar community violence intervention efforts, as well as emergent/innovative programs, that are responsive to community needs The City of Cleveland recognizes the vital importance of developing a sustainable framework to address all aspects of violence in the City. Through the Mayor’s Office of Prevention, Intervention and Opportunity, the City is soliciting proposals from qualified consultants to outreach into the community, engage residents in solution making, and provide recommendations for a city wide violence prevention strategic blueprint. The City of Cleveland understands that in order to create and implement a plan to reduce and eventually eliminate violence, we need to develop a blueprint that is adaptable and sustainable. It is also important that the communities most impacted by violence be engaged in solution making and planning. It is vital that the plan is heavily influenced by evidence-informed practices and community input. We believe that in order to prevent violence, we must address the underlying social determinants of health; including root causes of inequity and social disadvantages. The lifelong consequences of violence are costly and influence nearly all health and mental health outcomes through trauma and toxic stress. Additionally, these communities that are impacted by violence have systematically been ignored. This organization will provide the opportunities to influence the narrative that is told surrounding the violence they face. To this end, the City of Cleveland is dedicated to achieving Mayor Justin M. Bibb’s goal of “…having a comprehensive strategy in the city to address violent crime before it starts.” As the first step towards a comprehensive strategy that will address immediate needs and act as a long-term plan guided by a theory of change to address violence, a framework was developed to focus on key areas of violence. Additionally, a Cross Sector Leadership Partners group was formed through Cleveland Thrive, the Department of Justice CVIPI grant and has gathered and reviewed extant violence reductions plan (e.g. Cleveland Plan 2016 developed through National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention (‘NFYVP’) to catalyze the violence prevention strategy. The five elements of the strategic plan were 1) collaborative partnerships and structure 2) prevention plan to improve individual and community wellness and resiliency 3) intervention plan to improve individual and community wellness and resiliency 4) law enforcement efforts to further the strategy and 5) data collection, research, advocacy and policy planning to further the strategy. A multi-stakeholder group examined holistic data that included public health, law enforcement, and agencies that collect key outcomes in order to identify the focus neighborhoods most impacted by violence. The target neighborhoods will include Buckeye-Woodland, Central, Fairfax, Kinsman/Union-Miles, Mount Pleasant, North Broadway, and St. Clair/Superior. The neighborhoods are subject to change as evolving data is analyzed. The next step that will lead to the successful implementation of our strategy is the identification of a consultant to carry out a thoughtful community engagement process to develop a blueprint focused on the 7-10 targeted communities identified above that supports a city-wide approach.