JoAnne Wilcox Photography/dba The Elevator Service | Application Preview
JoAnne Wilcox Photography, operating as The Elevator Service, is applying for government grants to establish a community mediation and healing center focused on teaching facilitation and non-violence through organic relationship building. The business aims to address issues stemming from community violence, substance use disorder, and grief by training individuals to support those in distress, thereby preventing violence from spreading.
Initially started with one facilitator, the organization has successfully trained four individuals in community-building techniques within the first six months. Their current focus is on assisting families affected by gun violence and overdose, fostering an intergenerational and interracial support network through values-centered conversations and active listening. This grassroots approach has begun to unite various community members, from youth seeking to influence their peer groups to elders advocating for a return to nurturing community values.
The need for funding is underscored by the critical moment the community is facing. The proposal highlights the importance of modeling healing relationships for children, as a way to address broken attachments and cultivate a safe, loving environment. The organization's belief is that healing arises through relationships, and they seek to create spaces where this can flourish.
Currently, there are no similar initiatives in the community following the dissolution of a previous community mediation program. The Elevator Service intends to fill that gap without the constraints of legalities or privileged perspectives, focusing instead on collective learning and conflict resolution.
Their competitive edge lies in their proactive stance against violence, emphasizing relationship-building as essential to conflict resolution. Unlike reactive violence intervention programs, they aim to tackle the underlying cultural issues that contribute to violence, promoting nonviolent communication and addressing community needs to present a clearer path forward for everyone involved.
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General Information
Business Registration Number: 26-47777030
Location: New Haven, CT, United States
Length of Operation: 1-5
Number of Employees: 1-10 Employees
Annual Gross Income: Less than $100k
Annual Gross Expense: Less than $100k
Open to Loans: NO
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Funding Usage
We would like to build a community mediation and healing center, teaching facilitation and non-violence, through organic relationship building. We are a small group of people on a healing path from community violence, substance use disorder, and other forms of grief and loss. We believe that violence begins within the individual and that the community needs more people trained to support and connect with those who are hurting, as an act of violence prevention. We have been meeting people we otherwise wouldn’t have met, as we weave together our stories we are finding the support we need in the community.
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Business Plan
We began with one facilitator, and in the first 6 months had four people trained to facilitate community building circles. The violent nature of our community needs to change and in order to do that we are training people within communities that other organizations haven’t been reaching, giving them the tools, and reinforcing their learning through co-facilitation. Our current work is with families who’ve suffered loss do to gun violence and overdose, with a intergenerational, interracial support network organically growing, through our values centered conversations, deep listening, and speaking from our hearts. This narrative approach to connecting has built a foundation for us to grow from. Teenagers wanting to take it into their friend circles, through elders who want to remind people of a loving generation where families supported one another in close community. We are learning to turn toward one another again, and in the face of violence, changing the culture, nurturing what we want to see grow. Investing in the community is critical right now. Our children need to see a model that makes more sense, that helps to heal broken attachment, that creates a sense of safety and love. We are overlooking the simplest thing we could be doing: turning toward our neighbors, and inward toward our own brokenness, and supporting a community that heals. Healing happens in relationship. We want to nurture places where that is what grows.
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Self Identified Competition
We don’t have anyone in our community doing such work. Community Mediation disolved. We would like to step into that void, not from a place of lawyers and privilege, but as a community that leans in and learns to resolve conflict and build capacity in the community itself. Violence intervention programs in our community come reactively. We are a proactive approach, looking at the culture where violence grows, and providing an alternative to violence in the first place. In restorative Justice work, they often talk about the 80% of the work being mostly about relationship building. That’s where we would like to be, supporting the interconnectedness, reinforcing nonviolent communication, addressing unmet needs, so that an alternative way forward seems more clear.
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Contact Applicant
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