Neighbors in Action fosters local leadership, engages and mentors youth, prevents and responds to gun violence, and makes the neighborhoods of central Brooklyn safer and healthier for all residents. Neighbors in Action won the 2024 Brooklyn Org Spark Prize for their work toward racial and social justice with deep roots in the Brooklyn community.Â
Through outreach and programming, Neighbors in Action addresses community violence and the negative impacts of the criminal justice system by focusing on root causes such as poverty and trauma. From anti-gun violence initiatives to therapeutic services and workforce development, the team offers community-led, tailored solutions to the challenges facing the neighborhood.
Mobilizing Community-led Approaches to Safety
We mobilize local residents to promote peace and safety. Our Save Our Streets program, which takes a public health approach to ending gun violence, has been documented to reduce shootings.
Healing
Our community healing and well-being programs give youth participants who have experienced violence the tools they need to overcome trauma and succeed. All programming takes into consideration collective or historical trauma and resilience in order to heal.
Aiding Neighbors
We open our doors to anyone who wants to come in for help. Our services include helping people find jobs, apply for benefits, and access basic services. In partnership with Community Justice Connect, we train local residents to provide legal information to their neighbors so they can resolve housing, family, immigration, and other issues. There is also an on-site lawyer who provides free legal assistance to community members.
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Investing in Youth
Neighbors in Action engages youth from the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn, New York, with a focus on long-term investments, such as building transformative relationships and creating scaffolded opportunities for skill-building including meaningful educational, recreational, vocational, and artistic opportunities while implementing meaningful youth-led community projects to solve community issues. We train teens to become peer leaders and community organizers and help prepare young adults for the world of work. Many of our alumni stay involved and participate in leadership and organizing work after they graduate from our programs.
Placekeeping
By creating places that are welcoming, maneuverable, familiar, and conducive to economic development and social interaction, placekeeping can tip the scales in favor of safe and vibrant communities without relying on conventional law enforcement responses.
Placekeeping is more than just space improvement or beautification, it is as much about cultivating resident decision-making as it is about environmental design. Our annual activities include street festivals, arts campaigns, and events in spaces identified by program participants and residents activate under-resourced and underdeveloped spaces to help promote ways that they can be transformed into spaces that are joyful, healthy, and engaging.
More about Neighbors in Action
Neighbors in Action launched as the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center in 1998. The program changed its name in 2018 to recognize its expansion into new neighborhoods and new programmatic areas. Neighbors in Action is a program of the Center for Justice Innovation.
Everyone deserves meaningful opportunities to make a stable living. For our teams across the city, that raises a critical question: What does it look like to build economic justice from the ground up?
"To finally end gun violence in our communities, we need to invest in our kids and give them the support they need to thrive." That was Anthony Rowe, project director of our Neighbors in Action program in Brooklyn, after the team partnered with Launch Charter School in Crown Heights to support a walkout of more than 100 middle school students for National Gun Violence Awareness Month. In Our Time Press, hear from teachers, community activists, and lawmakers on the tragic toll of gun violence in Brooklyn and the important work being done to prevent it.
