In this episode, Joseph Popcun, Executive Deputy Commissioner at the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services discusses the state of New York’s new violence reduction initiative Project Rise: Respond, Invest, Sustain and Empower.
Project Rise is a $28 million statewide community violence prevention and community empowerment program to reach the people and places most impacted by the increase in pandemic-era violence. A unique program and funding model, Project Rise brings together community stakeholders to respond to gun violence, invest in solutions, sustain positive programming, and empower communities. Project RISE is meant to be a “grassroots” or “bottom-up” strategy to listen, learn from, and lift up the communities by directing resources where they are most needed.
To provide context, this episode also discusses the history of violence prevention and reduction efforts in New York as well as how Project Rise fits into the larger scope of work to help communities build capacity to implement and sustain programming to address the underlying factors contributing to violence in the community and enhance responses to violence within the community through increased community partnerships and programming with a healing lens.
