Violence Prevention
MCC takes a holistic, long-term approach to inhibit violence in our community that prevents and mediates conflicts while offering support to youth both in schools and out in the community. We strive to not just interrupt violence but also help young people thrive with safe, healthy, and hopeful futures.
Violence-Free Zone
Our Violence-Free Zone (VFZ) program serves students in five high schools throughout Milwaukee. The innovative approach connects young people with mentors who help them build skills and resilience to resolve conflicts peacefully, succeed in school, and grow to become leaders among their peers. This decreases incidents of disruptions, violence, truancies and suspensions, while increasing academic performance and safety.
Our VFZ Goals include:
- Inspire young people to achieve academically and socially
- Decrease violence & disruption within the school environment
- Improve accessibility to school climate surveys
- Increase student attendance among caseloads
Young Professionals Academy
A companion program to Violence-Free Zone, the Young Professionals Academy focuses on the positive: Youth Advisors work with VFZ youth to increase attendance and ensure success in their first and future places of employment through life skills development, work readiness training and ongoing job coaching.
Credible Messengers
Part of a national model that allows Violence-Free Zone to evolve into a program with influence in schools and in the streets, Credible Messengers specially trains staff to serve as mentors, mediators and even, violence interrupters. Credible Messengers partners with local government, law enforcement and the juvenile justice systems.
Advance Peace
Beginning in 2024, MCC began offering the Advance Peace Program to help young people, 14 to 24 years old, who are at the core of gun violence in Milwaukee. Advance Peace interrupts gun violence in American urban neighborhoods by providing transformational opportunities to young individuals involved in lethal firearm offenses and placing them in a high-touch, personalized fellowship—the Peacemaker Fellowship®. This program that’s new to Milwaukee takes a trauma-informed, healing-centered, case management approach to helping young people. This program is offered in partnership with Milwaukee County Department of Children and Youth & Family Services.
Video: Violence Free Zone
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