The Urban Peace Institute (UPI) officially launched our South Park School Safety Collaborative with support from the Goldhirsh Foundation’s LA2050 initiative in 2022. Through the initiative’s PLAY area, UPI was able to reimagine community safety by supporting peacemakers and building community leaders throughout the year. Through the awarded funding, UPI was able to implement robust programs to provide South Park residents with support to implement safety strategies within their neighborhoods.

Throughout the project, UPI convened the South Park School Safety Collaborative every 3rd Tuesday of the month, uniting stakeholders to come together to strategize on reducing gun and gang violence and improving South Park’s community health. Participants included school administrators, parents, community leaders, community violence intervention workers, and LAPD Community Safety Partnership Bureau officers. During meetings, UPI coordinated workshops and informational sessions to connect community members with resources.

As UPI expanded our efforts and programming in South Los Angeles, UPI identified a need to expand its Leadership Institute and Regional School Safety Collaborative to South Park as residents have continually raised safety concerns regarding student travel to and from 49 th Street Elementary due to rising gun violence, as well as ongoing drug use and a growing unhoused population crisis within the area.

Throughout the grant period, UPI saw and continued to grow participation in the South Park School Safety Collaborative’s biweekly meetings. Through previous cohorts, UPI found that community input and parent involvement increasingly became vital to ensuring the effectiveness of improving community safety. Following the grant period, UPI will strive to expand its reach in South Park, inviting residents to join meetings more regularly and actively participate in workshops and town hall style meetings.

During the grant period, UPI staff members also met with community members and consultants to distribute informative flyers throughout the surrounding neighborhood, while also coordinating outreach efforts with partners. In August, our partners in South Park, Resilient, hired a new staff member to coordinate, plan, and facilitate meetings with UPI staff. This addition, further allowed UPI to expand capacity of our programming in the area, enabling us to focus on participation outreach efforts while also providing a robust discussion with further inclusion of experienced voices on subject matters.

In September, UPI held its first Walk to School Day in the South Park neighborhood, convening at a park then walking with parents, children, partners and UPI staff to 49th Street Elementary School. UPI was joined by our partners 49th Street Elementary, Resilient Agency, CSP South Park, Council District 9 and community leaders. To promote safe routes, we held up signs and raised safety banners at the school, urging citizens to drive safer. Once walkers reached the school, UPI facilitated a resource fair to engage further parent participation. UPI was happy to host 15 participants for the walk and over 25 for the resource fair.

As part of the collaborative’s Safe Routes to School initiative, will continue to hold additional Walk to School Days in the South Park community to promote walking and biking and enhance feelings of safety alongside our partners.

In addition to the South Park School Safety Collaborative, the LA2050 grant award supported UPI’s 2022-23 Leadership Institute training. The Leadership Institute trains leaders on best practices in advocacy and community engagement and is comprised of three cohorts: Emerging, Advanced, and Congress. In June, UPI concluded all of our Leadership Institute classes and was honored to celebrate the graduation of 28 of our participants on June 28, 2023. We were so proud of the participants for spending 9 months expanding their knowledge of civic engagement and advocacy to better serve their neighborhoods.

At the core of UPI’s effectiveness is the feedback we receive from the various stakeholders and valuable community partners. To measure the success of our programming and identify areas of growth, UPI administers community assessments to measure feelings of safety and analyzes data from the Community Safety Partnership Bureau to track patterns of violence.

We are grateful for the support from Goldhirsh Foundation through the LA2050 initiative and welcome folks to join us in supporting peacemakers and community leaders to thrive! To learn more about the Urban Peace Institute, please visit us at www.urbanpeaceinstitute.org.