I am SO Lucky.

Sometimes I don’t realize it, but you know, I am so lucky. I can walk to the lake or the theater. We’re close to the studio, and our daughter goes to a great school. We have friends who enjoy all the fun and creativity life can offer: Fantastic Food, Music, Dance, Travel, Hiking, Baseball, Sailing. Fabulous! Even in this economy, I still think most of us are so lucky to do all we do, and live where we do.

But there’s another part of Chicago that’s not so wonderful. In some communities, they are not so lucky. There are neighborhoods where violence has become an epidemic and people stay locked up inside their homes out of fear. In some schools nearly every child knows someone who was shot or killed. Imagine that! Kids grow up with so much violence around them that it seems normal. You have to wonder, how can that EVER seem normal? But it does.

For YEARS now, every time I hear about a child being killed I think “Oh my God, not again.” My heart skips a beat, then races. I feel my jaw clench. I get pissed. I want to DO something about it! SOMETHING. But, honestly, I don’t REALLY want to do something about it, I mean, not personally. I’m not qualified, and I wouldn’t know WHAT to do about it. But, there are people who have a clear approach to stopping the violence and we can help them.

About 10 years I saw a sign that stopped my heart cold. It said, “STOP. KILLING. PEOPLE. CeaseFire.”

Another one showed a small child with the words “DON’T SHOOT. I want to grow up. CeaseFire.” At first I thought it was just a public service poster calling for a ceasefire. But its actually an amazing organization. CeaseFire approaches violence as a public health epidemic.

Over the years every time I would read another tragic story, I thought about CeaseFire, and thought I should get involved with them. But, I never did. Until now.

Their goal is to interrupt the cycle of violence and create more healthy norms of behavior. They do this with highly-trained youth-outreach and high-risk conflict mediators, and violence interrupters. YES, VIOLENCE INTERRUPTORS. These are streetwise people, many are former gang members who have spent time in prison, but are now “on this side of the line.” The violence interruptors are literally ON THE STREETS figuring out where violence may happen, and trying to stop it before it starts. They go directly into danger zones, talking to people and trying to get them to stop… to think about what they are doing, and the consequences and to stop the never-ending retaliations. They offer alternatives and education and job training and community building. And, it works.

Well, I still have that feeling that I want to do SOMETHING. So, I am inviting you to a fundraiser for CeaseFire. Instead of a live in-person event, I am emailing everyone I know and asking you all to email everyone you know to reach as many people as possible. I’d love to reach thousands.

My hope is that I can get 100 people to donate $100 to CeaseFire. Or 200 people to donate $50. 500 people to donate $25? 1000 people to donate $15? Donations don’t have to be big, there just have to be a lot of them.

So, PLEASE help me make this a reality. Join me in donating to this AMAZING group of people, who literally put their life on the line every day to make our city safer and more hopeful for EVERY child. We have been SO fortunate to enjoy our lives as we do. Let’s help other children have an opportunity to enjoy their lives without fear

If you are tired of reading about kids being killed, please be part of the solution by supporting people that make a difference.

Thanks for helping!

Nancy Cassidy

TO MAKE A DONATION CLICK THIS LINK :

http://www.ceasefirechicago.org/donate.shtml

(if you’d like to, on the donation page under Special Instructions you could tell them Nancy sent you)

CeaseFire, an initiative of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, is a scientifically-proven, interdisciplinary strategy based on public health, behavior change and epidemic-control methods focused on reducing shootings and killings.” “The FBI has found this is a documented best practice for reducing shootings and killings,” says CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin. CeaseFire works with community, city, county, state and federal partners incorporating street-level outreach, public education, community mobilization, faith leader involvement and police participation.

The Obama Administration Recognizes Lessons Learned from CeaseFire-Chicago:

“Attorney General Eric Holder recognized CeaseFire-Chicago as an example of an innovative, evidence-based strategy for violence prevention in his opening remarks at the “White House Conference on Gang Violence Prevention and Crime Control.” Attorney General Holder emphasized that “a rational, data-driven, evidence-based smart approach to crime – the kind of approach that this administration is dedicated to pursuing and supporting – must be part of a partnership in public safety.”

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT CEASEFIRE, CHECK OUT THESE LINKS:

http://www.ceasefirechicago.org/

New York Times article by Alex Kotlowitz: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/magazine/04health-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Article in Philanthropy Magazine Fall 2009:

http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/article.asp?article=1592&paper=1&cat=147

A Study published by the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University on the effeciveness of CeaseFire:

http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/ceasefire_papers/executivesummary.pdf