Touching Miami with Love, in collaboration with the Healing and Justice Center of Liberty City, is excited to launch Overtown’s first Healing and Justice Community-Based Model! Overtown is a community that needs healing and prevention services, trauma-informed care, and positive community outlets for residents. Years of hurt, self-harm, retaliation, and untreated trauma must be addressed. With the support of the Council for the Common Good and Allegany Franciscan Ministries, in partnership, we can begin this life-changing work.

For years, our only response to gun violence has been punitive measures that may land the shooter in prison but do nothing to prevent the ripple effect a shooting has on our communities or help communities heal and come together to prevent further violence. Communities often don’t involve the police or provide evidence because of generations of mistrust.

To stop gun violence, young people and our communities need a safe space to heal and process the traumatic experiences they are up against and the many root causes that lead to harm and conflict. We need community-based models for violence intervention that prioritize giving directly impacted people, especially young people, the basic tools they need to grieve, heal, and find employment and opportunity so they can become transformed citizens and community leaders who can choose to stop the violence.

Inspired by evidence-based, best-practice models under the leadership of Mayor Ras Baraka in Newark, New Jersey, the University of California, San Francisco Trauma Recovery Center, and CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets), a 30 year-old, internationally recognized mobile crisis intervention program based out of Eugene, Oregon, The Healing and Justice Center has convened a coalition of medical doctors, therapists, and community-based direct service organizations to develop a multi-pronged approach to public safety to intervene and prevent gun violence. The approach sees directly-impacted people as those with the power, wisdom, and relationships to stop the violence, giving them the tools and resources needed to do so instead of a top-down punitive policing approach.

Touching Miami with Love, in collaboration with the Healing and Justice Center of Liberty City, is excited to launch Overtown’s first Healing and Justice Community-Based Model! Overtown is a community that needs healing and prevention services, trauma-informed care, and positive community outlets for residents. Years of hurt, self-harm, retaliation, and untreated trauma must be addressed. With the support of the Council for the Common Good and Allegany Franciscan Ministries, in partnership, we can begin this life-changing work.

For years, our only response to gun violence has been punitive measures that may land the shooter in prison but do nothing to prevent the ripple effect a shooting has on our communities or help communities heal and come together to prevent further violence. Communities often don’t involve the police or provide evidence because of generations of mistrust.

To stop gun violence, young people and our communities need a safe space to heal and process the traumatic experiences they are up against and the many root causes that lead to harm and conflict. We need community-based models for violence intervention that prioritize giving directly impacted people, especially young people, the basic tools they need to grieve, heal, and find employment and opportunity so they can become transformed citizens and community leaders who can choose to stop the violence.

Inspired by evidence-based, best-practice models under the leadership of Mayor Ras Baraka in Newark, New Jersey, the University of California, San Francisco Trauma Recovery Center, and CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets), a 30 year-old, internationally recognized mobile crisis intervention program based out of Eugene, Oregon, The Healing and Justice Center has convened a coalition of medical doctors, therapists, and community-based direct service organizations to develop a multi-pronged approach to public safety to intervene and prevent gun violence. The approach sees directly-impacted people as those with the power, wisdom, and relationships to stop the violence, giving them the tools and resources needed to do so instead of a top-down punitive policing approach.

Our Model

• Safe Space– Community Engagement Coordinator will lead Healing Circles, community gatherings & events, connect the dots, build relationships and encourage positive engagement.
• High-Risk Intervention Outreach Workers: Identify, train and deploy non-traditional leaders from within the community (such as formerly incarcerated people and youth) to serve as High-Risk Intervention Outreach Workers
• Case Management: Provide case management to high-risk individuals, intervene and mediate conflicts between individual and rival group involved youth via High-Risk Intervention Outreach Workers
• Trauma Recovery Center: Increase access and awareness to healing and recovery services for victims and survivors of violence through launching a Trauma Recovery Center that will provide ongoing direct services, such as traditional therapy, art therapy, group therapy, victims advocacy, etc., in a community-based setting.
• Youth Programming: Help young people process the trauma they are experiencing, develop their emotional intelligence and life skills and reduce retaliatory violence through after-school programming in Overtown.
• Community Defense: Work with community-based organizations, the court system, and families of incarcerated people to advocate for them to return to their communities instead of going to prison. We support developing and implementing support plans in the face of unresponsive criminal defense lawyers, merciless sentencing laws, and a criminal legal system that does not rehabilitate.