TheBurg

05.18 | theburgnews.com | 15 Sharkey explained that, since the 1990s, the nonprofit sector exploded as residents in neighborhoods mobilized against violence. New groups focusing on youth mentorship and neighborhood enrichment proliferated. is trend was partly a direct response to rising crime rates, but was also enabled by a separate expansion in private, philanthropic wealth, possibly due to strong gains in the national economy in the 1980s. With the help of a research assistant, Sharkey set out to quantify the effects of neighborhood nonprofits on crime reduction. Drawing on data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics, the pair determined that, in a given city with 100,000 people, every new organization formed to confront violence or build stronger neighborhoods led to about a 1-percent drop in violent crime. "ese organizations were designed to take back city streets, not through law enforcement but by building stronger communities, and they were extremely effective," Sharkey said. someone to trust Sharkey's findings validate what many local community leaders know to be true about the relationship between neighborhood development and violent crime. While many of the active nonprofit organizations in Harrisburg aren't explicitly involved in violence prevention, their leaders recognize that, by providing essential services to their community— including mentorship, education and beautification— they've become participants in the fight against crime. "Nurturing relationships and building community is an absolute prerequisite to keep violence from occurring," said Scott Dunwoody, executive director of Bethesda Mission. "We're reaching out into the community one man, woman and child at a time." Founded in 1914 as a men's ministry and homeless shelter, Bethesda Mission began to expand its programs in Harrisburg at the same time as crime rates climbed. In 1983, it opened a women and children's shelter on S. 18th Street; in 1990, it started a youth center in an old fire station on Herr Street. Whereas its shelters offer residential programs, Bethesda Mission's youth center bleeds into the community surrounding it. Today, more than 75 kids from the 1st through 12th grades attend programs there after school, on weekends and throughout the summer. Volunteers help students with homework, teach cooking classes and supervise sessions in the gym or computer lab. ese services are so in demand that Bethesda Mission has made plans to expand its youth center into an adjacent building next year, which will allow it to double its programming capacity. Both Dunwoody and Serina Brown, director of the Youth Center, say they're in the business of building relationships and strengthening families, not policing the behavior of kids and their parents. But Brown said she wasn't surprised to hear about the causal relationship between community nonprofits and violent crime rates. While tutoring sessions and leadership classes may not look like violence prevention techniques, they do offer kids attractive alternatives to criminal activity. "When you're with someone through the good and the bad in life, it would make sense that it would prevent crimes because you have someone to trust," Brown said. "Imagine if every family in the city had that." When asked how the center measures its efficacy, Dunwoody cites a fact about graduation rates. Over the course of five years, 86 percent of the students who participated in Bethesda Mission's youth programs graduated from high school—much higher than the city's district-wide rate of 55 percent. He also points to the North Allison Hill neighborhood where the center is located. Quiet, leafy and well maintained, North Allison Hill has less visible blight and fewer incidences of violent crime than the South Allison Hill neighborhood close by. "We don't want to brag and say we're the reason why this neighborhood is stable, but we are a big part of it," Dunwoody said. "Centers like this can have an immense role in giving life to a community. It's the heartbeat." common sense Some neighborhoods have anchoring institutions and physical spaces like the Bethesda Mission Youth Center where residents can meet and build relationships. Others have anchoring organizations for citizens to address their shared challenges. ese groups, many of which rely on volunteers, are responsible for countless cosmetic and institutional enhancements across Harrisburg. In 2008, residents in Camp Curtin formed Camp Curtin Neighbors United to address problems of blight and trash, crime and economic development in their Uptown neighborhood. e all-volunteer organization held beautification days, mapped blighted buildings and drafted a strategic plan to outline short-term and long-term neighborhood objectives. ey opened a tool co-op on the grounds of Wesley Union AME Zion Church and later started a grant-funded pre-school in the church's basement. It currently employs two teachers who care for 15 children five days a week. Jean Cutler, a founding member and former president of CCNU, said that the neighborhood organization has become an organized, effective forum for citizens to voice their needs and find recourse. By investing in education and beautifying the neighborhood through tree plantings and trash cleanups, Cutler and the other members of CCNU hope that Camp Curtin will shed its reputation as one of Harrisburg's most distressed, crime-ridden neighborhoods. "Making the environment around you better is a huge part of trying to stop the crime," Cutler said. "People will be more respectful of the neighborhood, and we will have lower tolerance for outliers. I'm not a criminologist, but most of this is common sense." According to Sharkey, that's sound logic. He explained that having more eyes and ears in public spaces reduces the opportunities for criminal activity and signals to would-be criminals that a neighborhood isn't theirs for the taking. Essentially, residents must respond to crime the same way they might regard at an unsightly building project or waste site: by saying, "Not in my back yard." "Violence doesn't come out of nowhere; it comes when a place is abandoned," Sharkey said. "It comes when a place empties out, when there are not strong institutions, when the community isn't organized, and it's left on its own." Just ask Jeannine and Jeremy Domenico, who literally have eyes on the street from their residence in South Allison Hill. e Domenicos moved into their rowhome on South Summit Street, a narrow one-way that connects the busy thoroughfares of Derry and Mulberry streets, just before Christmas 2013. When they first bought their home, Jeremy (who goes by Jay) wouldn't let the couple sit in the living room that looks out onto the street. ey watched TV and took visitors in another room on the first floor, which was set back from the main entranceway, closer to the backyard. at way, Jay said, any stray bullets would travel farther to hit them. "ere were gunshots every night," he said. "Our main concern was drive-bys, and we figured, if we were in the back room, there would be four walls for bullets to go through." e Domenicos may not have landed in a neighborhood of choice in 2013, but the neighborhood was theirs—and they wanted people to know they were there to stay. By their account, they spent the better part of the next year trying to build a community. ey hosted their first block party, which is now an annual event. ey led trash cleanups and gained local fame for the elaborate decorations they put on their doors for every holiday – as well as for the four security cameras that keep watch over the front of the street and the alley behind their home. Over time, they say, the space around them transformed. ey no longer had to lead trash pickups— neighbors were doing it themselves. Gunshots sounded less frequently, and drug dealing no longer took place on their street. Cars still speed down the street the wrong way, but the activity that drove them inside their homes has dramatically fallen. "It's easy to go inside and shut your door when you see bad behavior," Jay said. "It seems like, if you live in a bad area, you get terrorized into staying in your house. But, when we're outside working, we messed up people's game plans."

• Cover