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Nonviolence Institute awarded $500,000 donation amid shooting surge

Providence Journal - 5/27/2021

Amidst rising gun violence in Providence, the nonprofit agency that has been instrumental in fighting it is getting financial help.

On Thursday, Brown University, the Rhode Island Foundation and the Partnership for Rhode Island announced their $500,000 gift to the Nonviolence Institute, which supports victims and acts as an intermediary between gangs in an effort to break the cycle of retaliation.

Cedric Huntley, the institute’s executive director, told The Providence Journal that while the allocation of the funding remains under discussion, it will be used in part to hire key staffers such as a grants manager, a grants writer and a communications official.

Not only is the institute currently operating with those roles vacant, it’s dealing with the city’s rash of shootings with just five outreach specialists who work on the ground and in communities to stop violence. In 2015, there were 17 specialists, a number Huntley would like to expand to once again.

While expressing appreciation for the donation, Huntley said his mind is also on the future.

“I’m thinking three years down or five years down the line. I’m thinking 10 years down the line that we need to start building a funding source that will keep this work going [despite that] somebody may — whatever the political climate is — say ‘Ok, we’re cutting here.’”

Asked exactly how much he needs for the institute, which has an annual budget of $1.8 million, Huntley said nonprofits “need as much as people will give.”

Brown spokesman Brian Clark told the Journal that the university’s donation, which accounts for $300,000 of the total, was focused on “short-term support for them that we could do privately,” and that there is no discussion about the possibility of giving more.

Tom Giordano, executive director of the Partnership for Rhode Island, which supplied $100,000 of the donation — the remaining $100,000 coming from the Rhode Island Foundation — said his organization hasn’t ruled out offering future funding.

“We are not shutting the door to that at all,” he said.

The attention to the institute and its lack of funding, Giordano noted, came after the city’s recent surge in shootings, the worst of which left nine people injured.

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“I think sadly it often takes more tragedy before people pay attention to what’s been underfunded, and often these things are a flashlight into the dark."

News of the donation came as the institute rolled out its Three-Cities Nonviolence Program, an initiative spanning Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls. The program, supported by more than $300,000 from the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile and Delinquency Prevention, is intended to support youth victims of gang-related violence and their families to prevent re-victimization.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Nonviolence Institute awarded $500,000 donation amid shooting surge

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