Homicides in Richmond are continuing to happen at an alarming rate. Mother and daughter above was gunned down while enjoying a beautiful day in their yard when gunfire rang out between 2 rival gangs. Repeating words from little Markiya Simone Dickson’s father, “everybody keeps going down the same path just to get the same results”, as he said after burying his 9 year old daughter hit and killed by a stray bullet from a gun after an argument on a basketball court. It’s time to do something different, try something new.
Organizations and churches have been doing surveys, prayer walks, feeding people, and having events with resource tables, those things are all good and necessary but they’re not continuous one on one support. So, to help bring peace where there is chaos, Faith Leaders from different denominations, the Richmond Police Department, VCU UNICEF, and other community leaders worked diligently to bring this continues one on one support initiative to communities where crime and homicides are prevalent. The goal is to bring resources that help fight violence and mentality that cause depression, loneliness, anger and other mental illnesses that contribute to the high crime numbers, on the onset of the problems not after they have grown so large that they are detrimental to themselves, their families and their communities. In other words, we're helping to go from Reactive to Proactive.
Join us! Join one of the teams above, become a Relationship Builder.
RESOURCE TEAM
This is where we can be more proactive than reactive. When families share things with the Relationship Buildings that call for resources to be deployed, the Resource Team is ready to connect people with those resources. Those resources include assistance such as homelessness, pregnancy resources, marriage and pre-marriage counseling, depression, bullying, etc.
ADMINISTATIVE / PLANNING TEAM
This is the team to keep it all together. They work on the details to accomplish our mission,
the where, when, what and how. They collect the data and keep records.
INTERCESSORY PRAYER TEAM
Intercessory prayer is love in action that requires you to sacrifice in order to pray for others. The model of Intercessory Prayer is Jesus’ ministry as a whole. This team will keep us in prayer. They will pray ahead of the walks and ahead of all of our activities lifting us up to Christ for blessings and graces.
GRIEF COUNCELING TEAM
Grief is a natural response to death or loss. The grieving process is an opportunity to appropriately mourn a loss and then heal. The Grief Counseling Team will help mourners acknowledge and accept both positive and negative feelings, allow plenty of time to experience thoughts and feelings, and to heal.
PARTNERS
Faith Leaders
Richmond Police Department
Intercessory Prayer Teams
TEAMS
CONNECTION TEAM
The Connection Team is the first contact with the community members. They are the ones that go door to door giving the community members a packet of resources and collecting their information for continued communications with them. This information is given to the Relationship Builders.
RELATIONSHIP BUILDERS
The contact information from the Connection Team is given to the Relationship Builders. They are the ones that make the calls to build trust with the families they are given so that they start to confide in them. The calls could be monthly, quarterly, or however they work it out with their families. No relationship builder will have more than 10 families.