The Multnomah County Safe and Thriving Communities project will create a holistic and local approach to violence prevention by aligning existing programs and infusing them with community voice.

This program aims to support and enhance efforts in more places to help catalyze and further the prevention and response to children’s exposure to violence and youth victimization and violence, especially gun and gang violence, through fully comprehensive approaches to violence and the promotion of well-being for youth.

The Multnomah County Safe and Thriving Communities project is aligning existing county- and city-led programs and infusing them with authentic community voices toward racial justice to create a holistic and local approach to violence prevention. The project will customize the emerging OJJDP/CDC violence prevention framework by fully integrating the local Defending Childhood Initiative’s comprehensive primary prevention approach into other violence prevention, intervention, suppression, and reentry efforts. The grantee will coordinate with culturally responsive/community-based providers to embed two community health workers with training in violence prevention and intervention into a newly created Violence Prevention Coordination Team consisting of a single representative from each city and county department overseeing violence prevention work. In addition, community health workers will lead community-healing efforts, organize within impacted populations, and coordinate with existing violence prevention programs to expand their reach and effectiveness. The proposal will impact efforts across Multnomah County specifically to address the needs of children and youth of color and those living in poverty.

Goals related to this work include (1) actively engage youth and adults from communities most impacted by violence into the county’s violence prevention efforts; (2) adopt a shared violence prevention framework across system wide partners that promotes healing and increases the safety, well-being, and healthy development of children, youth, and families; and (3) align, expand, and sustain local evidence-based violence prevention efforts consistent with OJJDP’s Shared Framework. Core partners that will work collaboratively to achieve these goals include the county’s Local Public Safety Coordinating Council; Multnomah County’s Department of Community Justice, Health Department, District Attorney’s Office, and Office of Diversity and Equity; and the City of Portland’s Office of Youth Violence Prevention and Police Bureau.
CA/NCF