A public-private White House initiative to fight gun violence has concluded, but the impact of the relatively small effort may yet be larger than its nearly $8 million budget suggests, the Associated Press reports.

The Community Violence Intervention Collaborative (CVIC) was a little-known initiative announced by President Joe Biden in June 2021, shortly after the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. CVIC, which included a focus on violence interruption programs, provided public funding, training, mentorship, peer exchanges, and other support, including a $20,000 mini-grant to 50 grassroots organizations too small to get federal funding directly. Coordinated by the nonprofit Hyphen, the initiative also sought to strengthen the infrastructure of grassroots groups to improve their capacity to receive future public funding. “The theory of change for this collaborative was to focus on community groups that were the hardest to reach, that were doing incredible work locally and had very little support,” said Fatimah Loren Dreier, who leads the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, one of the organizations that provided training.

Violence interruption programs work to identify the small groups of people who drive a disproportionate amount of gun violence in any given community and to provide economic aid and other interventions, such as job training to help counter the violence. Community violence interruption programs could be funded by about $350 billion included in the American Rescue Plan available for states, cities, and municipalities to use for a broad range of programs, as well as another $120 billion in aid for schools, but too many officials still do not understand the value of the approach.

According to research conducted by Amanda Kass of DePaul University and Philip Rocco of Marquette University, with support from the Joyce Foundation, participating cities allocated $71.7 million toward violence interruption programs—less than 1 percent of the $7.8 billion in coronavirus relief funds available, though they noted that numerous factors make it difficult to track spending. But Nina Revoyr, who leads the Ballmer Group’s work in Los Angeles, said the White House’s participation in violence interruption work conferred a new level of credibility and legitimacy to it. Coupled with the anger and suffering that still exist after the murder of George Floyd and years of a global pandemic, foundations and governments were more open to investing in violence interruption.

“It’s not that the work hasn’t existed,” said Revoyr. “What has shifted is the moment in time.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/rlat)