Our community has united to increase gun safety and reduce gun violence! The Gun Safety and Violence Reduction Collaborative is a community-driven effort to address gun safety and gun violence, which includes a focus on suicide prevention. Led by Clay Goddard and myself, the collaborative involves over 50 partners from the private, public, and social sectors, including community members.
The collaborative’s mission is to reduce suicides by firearms and reduce youth/young adult injuries and deaths due to firearms. The collaborative uses a holistic, data-driven approach, with a focus on five categories: diversion, education and skill building, community building, public awareness and data collection.
Key strategies include working with trusted community leaders, engaging youth and young adults, and collaborating with law enforcement and health care providers.
The collaborative received start-up funding from the City of Springfield and a three-year grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health, which has provided the collaborative the opportunity to pilot different approaches, projects and refine programs with community input. We are committed to being community empowered with shared leadership to design solutions that address the unique needs and perspectives of those most impacted.
Suicide prevention is a major focus, so educating employers and the community on warning signs and safe storage of firearms is critical. The business community is seen as a crucial partner in this work, with their ability to provide resources to their employees, raise awareness with their employees, and support pathways for youth and young adults.
A crucial step that has taken place is partnering with faith-based organizations, neighborhood groups, and responsible gun owners to promote awareness and access to resources like the 988 suicide crisis line. After surveying almost 100 young people, the collaborative found when they asked them what the community can do better, one of their key comments is to educate their parents about gun safety. Providing gun safety lock boxes and cords at the gun owner’s request is a step the collaborative has taken toward this goal.
We are starting to partner with neighborhood associations and other community and faith-based organizations to plan community events and create plans to execute the activities identified for each category with measurable accounts. Some of the accomplishments for the past six months include:
- 100+ youth and young adults had informal interactions with individuals being trained to become “Street Outreach Workers” – people from the community wanting to help youth and young adults reach their personal goals.
- Established Young Adult Council to develop activities and events for youth and young adults. In December, they held an Open Mic event and collected coats, warm clothing and over 100 cans of food for the community.
- Disbursed 24 medicine/gun boxes and 15 gun lock cables to responsible gun owners to better secure their firearms.
- 82 adults attended suicide prevention workshops held by different faith-based organizations in the community.
What’s next
- A new website to share information about the project.
- Deployment of street outreach workers.
- Quarterly Young Adult Council events.
- Quarterly events through faith-based and community-based organizations.
- Radio/podcast to share the arts from local artists and address issues young adults are dealing with, like depression, sexual abuse and homelessness.
- More suicide prevention workshops.
- Development of PSAs to educate the community about this work.
Part of this work includes gathering baseline data on reported gunshots, that includes a better understanding of the communities where gun shots are reported the most. The ability to access comprehensive data on injuries, suicides, etc. from all sources can help the collaborative to focus resources better.
Overall, the Gun Safety and Violence Reduction Collaborative represents a collaborative, data-driven approach to a complex community challenge of saving lives and strengthening Springfield’s neighborhoods. The goal is to see measurable outcomes in terms of reduced gun violence and suicides within the next three years.