A $25,000 gun violence prevention grant from the Manhattan District Legal professional’s Workplace had optimistic outcomes with its largely Harlem-based youth recipients this previous summer season, collaborating organizations say.
Emergent Works and New Yorkers Towards Gun Violence (NYAGV), two nonprofits, have been among the many 11 organizations to obtain funding for stipends to encourage kids to take part in paid productive programming in the course of the months when shootings are historically the best.
“The grant for our youth was very inspiring,” mentioned Emergent Works pupil coordinator LaiQuan DuBose. “It in all probability was essentially the most cash they obtained in our program in a brief time period. But it surely additionally allowed them to essentially give attention to the work facet … They understood that they’re getting paid to satisfy the deadlines.”
Zeek, a highschool senior enrolled in Emergent Works’ programming, advised the AmNews his stipend helped cowl faculty provides and winter garments. One other participant, Dontay, says the cash went in the direction of groceries for his mother in addition to higher garments for college.
However the grant goals to do greater than present summer season spending cash. Emergent Works launched in the course of the pandemic to supply technical coaching {and professional} growth for at-risk youth whereas working to shut the racial wealth hole. A lot of the employees, together with DuBose, are justice-impacted or previously incarcerated. This system supported by the grant, T.Rap, engages individuals by music manufacturing and web site design.
Over the summer season, individuals met on the Emergent Works workplaces on 54th Road to provide an eight-track album,Don’t fall for the TRAP, which they uploaded to Bandcamp whereas additionally growing a website about their work. “It’s an excellent surroundings,” mentioned Zeek. “The individuals [at Emergent Works], they actually assist you develop. You possibly can speak to them about something.”
Pictures courtesy of the District Legal professional’s Workplace of New York
NYAGV dates again to the Nineties when Brooklyn mother and father organized for gun management after a lethal Prospect Park capturing. The D.A.’s grant went in the direction of the group’s Miller mentorship program, which teaches gender and racial justice points to collaborating teenagers, with alumni typically serving because the mentors.
Mentor Priya Boyce, a former participant, recalled studying how points like meals shortage and redlining — the discriminatory lending observe as soon as used to maintain Black Individuals out of sure neighborhoods — contribute to greater charges of gun violence. Now, she teaches others. “I may see it clicking within the mentees’ and mentors’ heads how gun violence is embedded and intertwined, and the ways in which we are able to sort of forestall it,” she mentioned.
Like Emergent Works, NYAGV provided a secure area for individuals to specific vulnerability. Program Director Frank Teah hosts a masculinity focus group whereas deputy schooling director Andrea Gonzales runs a trauma focus group. “Gun violence usually includes younger males and boys as perpetrators,” mentioned Teah. “If we are able to attain them in order that the concepts we’ve been conditioned to see being a person as a technique [that] this isn’t the one option to be sturdy.”
Together with the schooling initiatives, the mentees additionally put collectively {a magazine} and a culminating block social gathering this previous August to showcase their artistic tasks and what they realized. The grant additionally helps reframe how individuals, some who’re justice-impacted, work together with prosecutors.
“Our younger individuals on this explicit program particularly are rethinking what justice seems to be like,” mentioned NYAGV Schooling Director Shaina Harrison. “After they see somebody from the D.A.’s Workplace who’s funneling cash to communities which can be disproportionately affected by gun violence to younger individuals who won’t essentially match the everyday printout of what an excellent child is, it adjustments issues for them.
“We’ve had younger individuals, whether or not from Harlem or from Queens discuss being written off as a result of they made some unhealthy choices, and thru this program, have discovered a lot extra energy in who they’re.”
The grants started when Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg took workplace in 2022 and since reached $295,000 in complete annual awards stemming from cash seized from white collar crimes dedicated by main banks. Since then, shootings have dropped by 66%.
Writer’s Word: A earlier draft was revealed with outdated Manhattan capturing statistics. The brand new numbers mirror October 2025.
