The gun violence prevention program Violence Intervention and Prevention Fort Worth once had as many as 21 employees, most of them neighborhood change agents who mentored boys and men between 11 to 29 years old and connected them with resources.
“On a day-to-day basis, it’s a consistent engagement with these young men,” said Bishop Rodney McIntosh, director of VIP Fort Worth.
In May, McIntosh had to let 10 of his employees go.
VIP Fort Worth benefited from the support of the One Second Collaborative, an effort launched by United Way in 2022 to help prevent gun violence. The collaborative, named for the quick decisions that can cause or prevent gun violence, began through pandemic stimulus funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.
In anticipation of the end of the stimulus money, United Way applied for Community Project Funding from Congress for fiscal year 2025. The nonprofit was approved for $1.18 million, but appropriations from the congressional March spending bill included no Community Project Funding.
The collaborative is the result of cooperation between Tarrant County, the city of Fort Worth, Fort Worth police and community-based organizations like McIntosh’s, said Shon Dorsey, executive vice president and chief impact officer for United Way of Tarrant County.
Other beneficiaries of the collaborative include Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Tarrant County, the YMCA of Metropolitan Fort Worth, Communities in Schools and Community Frontline.
“When we provide health and wellness support to young people through public and community safety programs, we ensure they have pathways to mental and emotional well-being, employment and education resources,” said Dorsey.
McIntosh said VIP Fort Worth’s tie to the One Second Collaborative connects the young men in his program with resources that his organization alone cannot provide.
“Those times that somebody in my program may have needed drug counseling, well, I could just call somebody from United Way and say, ‘I got a young man who’s involved in this, we need to get counseling for him,’ and then they would give me a number or referral,” McIntosh said.
In the meantime, United Way “will continue to promote awareness of the need and impact while advocating for public funds,” said Dorsey.
McIntosh said he has spoken with leaders in city government who he believes may be able to help acquire funding.
If the program is able to continue, Dorsey said, United Way will continue to bring together and support organizations taking part in the collaborative.
“We also plan to provide more technical assistance and capacity-building support to help these organizations improve their sustainability,” he said.
McIntosh said the program has made a real difference, and he does not want to lose the ground gained.
“I hate to see all that hard work go to waste, or we see us end up reverting back to what it looked like before we were actually given the funding and able to make an impact and a change,” said McIntosh.
McKinnon Rice is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.