We stop violence before it starts. Our Peacekeepers know the streets, know the people, and know what to say when it matters most. We reach the person, heal what drives the conflict, and build the life waiting on the other side of the choice.
Some conflicts can be resolved earlier by trusted community members. This is not opposition to law enforcement. It is about reaching people first, with the voices they already listen to.
People listen differently when the person speaking has walked the same road. Lived experience is not a liability. It is the foundation of this work.
Chronic exposure to violence creates grief, hypervigilance, and survival responses. Left untreated, those feelings become tomorrow's conflict. We treat what lies beneath.
You cannot keep telling someone not to go back without offering somewhere else to go. Jobs. Education. Housing. Transportation. Mentorship. A real life on the other side.
Safe neighborhoods are not built in offices. They are built on porches, at cookouts, in gyms, and in the quiet conversations between people who trust each other.
A person's past does not disqualify them from stopping the next tragedy. Often, it is exactly what qualifies them.
Every week, our clinicians at New Harmony sit across from someone whose trauma began with a single moment. A moment on a corner. A moment that could have been interrupted, if the right voice had arrived five minutes earlier.
We built New Harmony to meet people after that moment. We are building the No More Violence Foundation to meet them before it.
This work is not ours to invent. Elders, neighbors, mothers, and people with hard-earned experience have been keeping the peace on their blocks for as long as there have been blocks. Our job is to give that work a name, a structure, and real support. To treat community wisdom as the profession it already is.
This foundation is not a rescue operation. It is an infrastructure. One that hires from the corners it serves. That trains its people at the level the work requires. That connects everyone it reaches to the care New Harmony provides.
Interrupt. Heal. Stabilize. Connect. Transform. Build peace.
They will be trained. Supported. Compensated for the work. Credible messengers from the neighborhoods they walk, moving through a professional curriculum built with clinicians, community elders, and practitioners already doing this work in New Jersey and beyond.
This is what it looks like when community wisdom is treated as the profession it already is. A workforce, not a service project.
Every person we work with walks a defined journey. From closest to the violence, to closest to the solution. This is not a program. It is a pathway.
A dispute, a shooting, a release from incarceration, an unresolved family tension.
A trusted Peacekeeper meets the person where they are. Not a referral card. A relationship.
Immediate mediation, safety planning, and follow-up over weeks. Not a single conversation.
Trauma-informed counseling, grief support, and behavioral-health care through New Harmony.
Employment, education, housing, ID, transportation, mentorship. The life the choice leads to.
Participants become mentors, Peacekeepers, or community leaders. And they reach the next person.
We are launching in Essex County, New Jersey. Beginning in the neighborhoods carrying the heaviest share of community violence. As trust builds, we grow block by block.
We do not parachute in. We hire from the corners we serve.
The Community Peace Response.
A trusted number families, schools, and community organizations can call before a situation becomes a police call, a hospital visit, or a funeral. Built to align with New Jersey's Seabrooks-Washington Community-Led Crisis Response Act. Launching as capacity, protocols, and partnerships allow.
A boxing night. A block cookout. A fatherhood circle. A peace walk. A mediation night for young people carrying too much for their age.
Our events are not the mission. They are the way people find their way into it. Neutral ground where a young person meets the elder they will one day trust. Where a family in crisis finds out where to call. Where a neighborhood sees itself gathered around something other than a candlelight vigil.
"Peace is not the absence of violence. It is the presence of somewhere to go."
Most violence prevention organizations meet people in the street. Most behavioral health organizations meet them in a clinic. The No More Violence Foundation and New Harmony Behavioral Health meet them in both, and together.
When a Peacekeeper de-escalates a conflict, the young man on the other side of that conversation often needs somewhere to go next. New Harmony is where he lands. Trauma-informed therapy. Substance-use care. Long-term mental health support. All delivered by clinicians who understand the neighborhoods our Peacekeepers walk.
Two organizations. One continuum of care. Community intervention on the front end, behavioral health on the back end, and nothing lost between them.
You know your block. You have walked the road. If you have the trust to enter a hard conversation and the discipline to hold the room, the Peacekeeper Academy is being built for you.
Apply 02Faith communities, schools, hospitals, city offices, reentry programs, gyms, employers. The work is stronger when it is stitched together. Tell us what you are already doing.
Reach out 03A trained Peacekeeper on the corner is measured in dollars per hour, not per case. Your gift funds training, stipends, and the community events that bring the block back to itself.
GiveEvery Peacekeeper, partner, and supporter starts with one conversation. Send us a note. We read every one, and we get back within a week.
Whether you are ready to walk your block as a Peacekeeper, run a community program with us, or just want to learn more before you decide, this form goes straight to the founding team.
A family member is worried. A young person is walking into something. A neighbor just came home and does not know what happens next. This form goes straight to our founding team, and we get back within 24 hours.
You do not need to have every detail. You do not need to know their whole story. Tell us what you know, and we will take it from there.
