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Programs and Projects
How Does the Institute for Community Peace Work?
ICP began its community work as a funding collaborative supporting seven demonstration sites with the goal of developing and testing locally driven models to demonstrate that peace is possible and violence is preventable.
The work has expanded to embrace three primary program areas and a wide variety of initiatives.
Discovery – Exploring emerging issues in violence prevention through demonstration and research, and partnering with communities to test and advance strategies for sustaining peace.
Cultivation - Translating lessons from practice and research into capacity building programs and activities for practitioners, trainers, evaluators, funders and policy makers.
Transformation – Reframing policies and messages to provide public education, information and advocacy that embrace community peace as a national norm.
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ICP Programs and Projects Include:
 Structural Violence
Healing Racial Wounds
Structural Violence &
 Community Peace
Engaging Citizens To
Support Education
Violence Prevention and Faith
Citizen Security In Guyana
Child Involvement In Violence
Training Practitioners
Framing Public Messages
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| Structural Violence(2005-2006) |  |
The C.S. Mott Foundation awarded a grant to the Institute for Community Peace to conduct an environmental scan to determine whether structural racism could be addressed through a focus on primary violence prevention. In its prior work with community-based organizations, ICP had noted the great difficulty communities faced in sustaining violence prevention accomplishments if issues of race and racism were also not attended. The study included:
- a review of practice and research literature to determine the extent to which the confluence of race and violence has been studied;
- interviews with a variety of people in select communities to explore whether and how communities are taking on the dual issues of violence and race and to delineate lessons learned;
- a national online survey of communities across the country to understand how race and violence are emerging as issues and the extent to which communities are recognizing structural components to their work;
- a review of ICP's lessons with respect to race and violence;
- development of a conceptual framework using ICP's developmental stages as a process to engage communities in integrated work on race and violence; and
- recommendations for future action.
| Healing Racial Wounds | |
The John Fetzer Institute awarded a grant to the Institute for Community Peace (ICP) to explore the thoughts of African Americans about the usefulness of love and forgiveness as a concept for healing the nation's racial wounds. The yearlong project was a part of the Fetzer Institute's campaign "to encourage contemplation and conversation about how love and forgiveness can effect meaningful change in individuals and society." ICP interviewed 70 African Americans from all walks life to elicit their thoughts and concerns about the relevance of love and forgiveness in healing racial wounds and suggestions about the actions that individuals, community and the nation can take to address the harms of historic racism.
| Structural Violence And Community Peace (2007) | |
An anonymous donor awarded a grant to ICP to learn whether the work of violence prevention practitioners embodies concepts and practices that reflect a focus on community peace (focusing not only on ending physical acts of violence but also on promoting community health). ICP interviewed select national and international practitioners to gain insights about their primary violence prevention work, the ways in which they feel that their work has transformed community and the role of community in that transformation.
| Engaging Citizens To Support Education (2006-2007) | |
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation awarded ICP a contract to support the efforts of the Mississippi Department of Education in developing a comprehensive strategy for transforming the state's public education system, including a broad-based plan to engage citizens in supporting education. The state was awarded a multi-year grant by Kellogg to support its strategy.
| Violence Prevention and Faith (2006-2008) | |
ICP is subcontracting with Advocates for Human Potential (AHP) to evaluate the Rural Domestic Violence and Child Victimization Enforcement Grant Program Special Initiative: Faith-based and Community Organization Pilot Program (DVFBCO), a grant program funded by the Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) at the Department of Justice (DOJ). The evaluation is funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Mitchell Brown, ICP Research Director, is a co-principal investigator of the evaluation along with Mark Small of Clemson University and Andy Klein of AHP. The evaluation of the DVFBCO addressed three major areas: project outcomes, organizational capacity, and the value-added of faith for domestic violence programming.
The DVFBCO was designed to provide small grants ($10,000 - $100,000) to faith-based and community organizations in rural areas to provide domestic violence services through an intermediary model over a one year period. Three intermediaries were selected, one that provided sub-grants initially only in southwest Idaho, a second that provided sub-grants throughout Wyoming, and a third that provided sub-grants to all rural communities across the nation. Each of the intermediaries provided different forms of capacity support to their sub-grantees. In all, 54 sub-grantees were funded of 176 applicants among the three intermediaries.
ICP is leading the capacity portion of the evaluation. To assess the effectiveness of the capacity building portion of this pilot program, we have developed a five part design that includes: 1) an on-line capacity assessment administered to all DVFBCO applicants prior to the start of the grant, at the end of the grant period, and 6-months after the end of the grant period; 2) case studies of 8 sub-awardees that included site visits and monthly phone interviews; 3) monthly phone interviews with representatives of each of the three intermediary organizations; 4) focus groups sessions with sub-awardees; and a sub-awardee evaluation of the technical assistance provided by the intermediary organizations.
The final wave of data collection is planned for March-June 2008 and the final report to NIJ will be delivered December 2008 and publicly available March 2009.
For More Information:
Improving Organizational Capicity Among FBCO Domestic Violence Service Providers
| Citizen Security In Guyana (2006-2007) | |
The Inter-American Development Bank awarded a contract to the Institute for Community Peace to work with the Government of Guyana (South America) to develop a citizen engagement effort as part of a comprehensive strategy to promote citizen security in the country. ICP worked with personnel from the Department of Home Affairs in Guyana and international expert and ICP Board Member Joan Serra Hoffman to develop written and online training curriculums to build the capacity of local community organizers to engage community residents.
| Child Involvement In Violence | |
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention contracted with the Institute for Community Peace to build the capacity of select grantees to sustain work to prevent child involvement in violence (as witnesses and victims). ICP provided training and technical support to grantees in Chatham, South Carolina, Rochester, New York, Chicago, Illinois and San Francisco, CA. (2005-2006)
| Training Practitioners | |
The Juvenile Justice Advisory Group of the District of Columbia awarded a grant to the Institute for Community Peace to train grassroots practitioners to evaluate their efforts. ICP designed a yearlong curriculum to teach the elements of evaluation to practitioners involved in youth development and violence prevention organizations in the District of Columbia.
| Framing Public Messages | |
Linda Bowen, Executive Director of the Institute for Community Peace, has been named a Fellow of the Frameworks Institute, a communications research organization that works to build the capacity of non-profit organizations to develop and implement public messages to effect social change. Bowen works with Frameworks in building the capacity of a variety of organizations to frame messages about race and community engagement.
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