overview

Over the past decade, there have been extraordinary gains in restorative justice and in community violence intervention work, but there is not enough connection between the two fields in practice. This Collaborative aims to close that gap by bringing together people in CVI work in New York City (including neighborhood- and hospital-based violence interrupter programs and more) to integrate an understanding and practice of restorative justice into their work. 

This year, the New York City Collaborative to Transform Violence will bring scale to the insight and depth built in its first year, in which a group of leading Community Violence Intervention (CVI) practitioners gathered monthly at Common Justice’s office in Downtown Brooklyn for full-day sessions exploring which restorative justice-based tools and frameworks to address serious violence were most useful to CVI and then honed how they could be practically applied in their on-the-ground  work.

Year 2 of the Collaborative is a Training of Trainers. Our Year 1 partners from LIFE Camp, Man Up!, Prize Possessions, SAVE, Lead By Example, and Save Our Streets (Bronx) are returning and are now joined by Guns Down Life Up, True 2 Life, Project ECHO, We the People 4 the People By the People, and Elite Learners Inc. Kicking off in November 2025, this 8-month Restorative Justice Training of Trainers will develop and support teams of leaders from each organization to deliver a series of five half-day trainings on restorative justice for CVI work to larger cohorts at their own and affiliated organizations. This is a massive undertaking that will build the capacity of Community Violence Intervention practitioners in all 5 boroughs of NYC to both interrupt cycles of violence and create opportunities for repair. We look forward to sharing more when we get to the other side.