"An Amazing Commitment to Children"

Lansing, Michigan built an ecosystem of community violence intervention programs (anchored by Advance Peace and the Lansing Empowerment Network) that reduced shootings by 38% between 2022 and 2025. Their relationship-based outreach, mentorship, and victim support continue to prove effective despite federal funding cuts.

Farm stands operating on sliding-scale and pay-what-you-can models are improving access to fresh, healthy food in communities battling poverty and food insecurity. In these models, residents who can afford to pay full price are subsidizing some of the costs for residents who cannot. The rest of the funding comes from a patchwork of support.

Fab Youth Philly’s Play Captains program hires teens in the summer to lead play groups on multiple streets throughout the city, leading games and activities like science experiments and storytime. Since 2017, the group has supported over 500 teens, providing many of them with their first jobs. Data shows that participating in the program leads to more on-time high school graduations, better work habits, reduced summer slide and improved employability and family finances.

RESTORE is a juvenile re-entry program offering supportive programming and guidance to intervene in cycles of crime and help more youth avoid the juvenile system and learn to make more positive choices. Already this year, RESTORE has served 344 young people through their workshops. Since launching in 2023, the program has helped 19 people graduate with their high school diploma, GED or a certification.

Boys Champion educates young boys on healthy masculinity, combatting cultural norms that lead to sexual and gender-based violence through various outreach initiatives, mentorship opportunities, and events held at local schools. Since 2018, the group has reached more than 10,000 young boys, teaching them ways to promote gender equality in their communities.

A partnership between the local school district, police and the nonprofits the Karen Organization of Minnesota and The Urban Village is helping fight addiction and gang influence among Karen youth. Since the partnership was formed, overdoses among youth have decreased significantly, and some students have begun forming supportive relationships with specialists from nonprofits and local police whom they can lean on when they need to.

Turnup Jigawa is a leadership program that provides mentorship around advocacy and communication with the goal of training young people to engage with lawmakers and community stakeholders. Students go on to spearhead projects in their own communities, such as one participant’s awareness campaign around environmental hygiene and another’s initiative to provide college and career counseling to secondary students.

Women at displacement camps in Nigeria are using a traditional method of saving and loaning money called Adashe to provide each other with financial support. The women in the Adashe group pool their extra money into a collective fund and split it between group members on a monthly rotation.

Through a land trust, Community Partners in Affordable Housing sells homes to buyers at a fixed cost while maintaining ownership of the land they’re built on, allowing those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford market rate housing to become homeowners. Some of the homes are even built by high school students enrolled in a local Geometry in Construction program.

Along the Way is filling a crucial gap in the community by providing in-home childcare services to single mothers who work shifts during the nights or weekends. Through a holistic approach, the organization has enabled mothers to enter or remain in the workforce, ensured fair wages to the caregivers it employs, and is going to start partnering with for-profit employers to make this a community effort.