Milwaukee
Prevention Institute (PI) worked with Milwaukee Health Department’s Office of Violence Prevention to facilitate the development of a strategic plan with broad community input. PI leveraged expertise with the UNITY City Network, decades of experience providing consultation services to cities, and the Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience (ACE|R) framework to deliver guidance. The planning process resulted in the Milwaukee Blueprint for Peace, a living document that draws on community assets and best practices and calls for increased collaborative action by multiple sectors.
Employing a public health approach, it focuses on preventing violence before it occurs, as well as intervention efforts to ameliorate the impacts of violence and prevent future perpetration and victimization. The blueprint sets forth comprehensive strategies grouped under six goals to promote community safety and resilience to reduce incidence of interpersonal and structural violence:
- Stop the shooting, stop the violence
- Promote healing and restorative justice
- Support children, youth and families
- Advance economic opportunity
- Foster safe and strong neighborhoods
- Strengthen capacity and coordination of violence prevention efforts
Over 1,500 individuals participated in the planning process through a range of activities: a community launch event with 150 community partners and residents, four Steering Committee meetings, stakeholder interviews, data and evaluation roundtable discussions, and several additional community engagement activities including youth forums, online surveys, and community conversations. The process also included a Safe MKE Forum in which representatives from diverse sectors, including business, faith, government, public health, and grassroots programs, came together to explore national strategies and opportunities to align local violence prevention efforts in Milwaukee. As Milwaukee moves into implementation, the Office of Violence Prevention calls for continued collaborative action.
Read Milwaukee’s Blueprint for Peace.
To learn more about the launch, visit Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, US News and World Report, Wisconsin Public Radio, CBS 58, Fox 6 TV, and Milwaukee Independent.
To learn more about the process, check out the planning launch update from November 2016 and the planning process update from March 2017, and related media coverage: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, Wisconsin Public Radio, Fox 6 TV, Urban Milwaukee, CBS 58, and The Milwaukee Independent.
Funding for the planning process is provided by a generous grant from the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and partial funding from the Tides Foundation and the Federal ReCAST Milwaukee grant.