CHAMPAIGN — Imagine you’re tasked to intervene with a young man whose loved one’s life was claimed by gun violence. He’s “hot,” or seeking revenge.

In this race against time and trauma, you may not have the facilities to approach directly. So you use your connections and move laterally.

“You want to get next to this individual and figure out who he listens to. Is it an uncle? Is it a big cousin he respects?” said James “Tygar” Corbin, resource navigator for FirstFollowers, a nonprofit that helps those recently released from prison re-enter society. “That’s the trick. You don’t go up and say ‘Man, don’t do this.’ You have to get in with his family. Who’s in his circle?”

In the end, perhaps the words of someone he trusts can end the cycle of violence before it begins anew.

This role is a key puzzle piece in the blueprint for gun-violence reduction that the Champaign City Council approved Tuesday: “street-outreach workers,” also known as “gang interventionists” or “violence interrupters.”

The city hopes these workers can “form mentoring relationships” with young clients at risk of committing violence, while linking them “to needed services and institutions and advocate on their behalf,” the blueprint states.

In some ways, they’re the last piece of Champaign’s blueprint, which involves funneling $3.2 million in federal coronavirus relief funds to different organizations — but street-outreach workers have yet to be included in that budget.

Champaign will seek an entity to lead this street-outreach strategy through a request for proposals, which is “estimated to be finalized within the next several weeks,” Deputy City Manager Joan Walls said.

The city’s blueprint outlined a few key traits sought for street-outreach workers. They’ll likely be native to the community and have prior experience with gangs and street organizations. Interventionists could lean on their pasts to build relationships with at-risk youth who are most likely to perpetrate or experience gun violence.

The model takes after the methods of Chicago and Boston’s “CeaseFire” programs and Operation Peacemaker Fellowship, a 20-year violence-prevention program in Richmond, Calif., all of which used street interventionists to reduce firearm-related violence in their communities.

In Champaign, the street-outreach team will try to connect clients with good local opportunities. FirstFollowers will receive referrals from street-outreach workers for its workforce-training program, “Go Make a Difference.”

“These outreach specialists are involved in preventative measures,” Corbin said. “If they see an issue or a problem, they’ll say, ‘This individual might need wraparound services, he’s out on the block all the time. Let’s see if someone can talk to him and get him out of the street.’ They’re going to be on the first line of offense.”

FirstFollowers is set to get about $470,000 in COVID-19 relief funds to extend the reach of its services, bring in more full-time employees and expand the length of the workforce-training program from about 18 weeks to 18 months.

As it exists now, FirstFollowers takes young men who’ve been through the criminal-justice system, usually 18 to 24 years old, and provides them workforce training. They’re taught financial-literacy topics like building wealth and credit, and get paid to build homes.

The agency’s drop-in center at 314 Cottage Court was built, floor to ceiling, by FirstFollowers participants. It’s the sixth house they’ve built to date, and street-outreach workers could help expand their clientele.

“We still have a relationship with a lot of the young men who came through the program,” Corbin said. “We’ve won some and we’ve lost some, but with a bigger budget, we can keep them longer.”

‘What makes them effective could also be their demise’

The street-outreach approach is bold, and its effectiveness has been well-studied, but it’s not a silver bullet in the fight against gun violence.

The approach takes time, and on-the-job events can weigh heavily on the workers bearing the burden. Just ask someone who’s studied it professionally.

“What I’m more concerned about is how do we sustain these effects over time,” asks Kathryn Bocanegra, who researches anti-violence initiatives at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s College of Social Work. “As we try to save people in the line of violence, are we destroying others’ lives at the same time?”

Bocanegra has spent nearly two decades working in mental-health and violence-prevention roles in the city. She and her research team interviewed 35 of Chicago’s street-intervention workers last spring, going deep on their jobs and traumas and how the professional environment could be improved.

Their findings were published in a summary they titled “Between a Bullet and its Target.” Bocanegra has some specific recommendations as Champaign takes on a similar program.

For one, mental-health support is critical, she said. The qualifications necessary for a street-outreach role can be a double-edged sword.

“The people who do this work usually have extensive trauma history; you’re not employing people who have blank slates” Bocanegra said. “But those extensive trauma histories are what makes them effective in their work, and what leads them to that work.

“What makes them effective could also be their demise in the profession.”

These workers use their trauma to relate with gang-involved, at-risk youth, but they often experience more on the job.

Most of the workers the researchers interviewed said they had witnessed a traumatic death, experienced at least one symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder and worried about their pay.

One strategy, Bocanegra said, is “to intentionally, preventatively and proactively build the mental-health support for those doing this work.”

“Because they will work with people who are trying to kill each other and who will die, they will be exposed to shootings and homicides, and rather than pretend that this won’t affect them or that exposure won’t occur, plan for it and build in regular systematic support for staff members,” she said.

There are important professional considerations, too, like helping staff members build relational tools beyond their experiences with trauma. Many of these workers are highly skilled leaders, conflict mediators and communicators, Bocanegra said.

On top of that, she said, “it’s important for supervisors to convey that workers are more than the worst thing they’ve ever done, and the worst thing that’s ever happened to them.”

‘It’s going to take the right people to do that work’

FirstFollowers’ founder and director, Marlon Mitchell, knows there’s a lot of “heavy lifting” to come for his future street-outreach peers.

“It’s going to take the right people to do that work, who’ve changed their lives and care enough about their community to try to resolve the issues we see,” he said.

And it’s not a quick fix, he cautioned. Gun violence often stems from deep, traumatic wounds, he said, which can’t be processed overnight.

“There’s already conflict in the community that festers, a lot of back-and-forth retaliation. It takes a very skilled person to do that conflict resolution,” he said.

Mitchell lost his youngest brother to gun violence in 2018. He’s witnessed firsthand how that trauma rippled through himself, his family and his brother’s survivors.

And through his role at FirstFollowers, he’s seen how the youth he invests in might go off track even after they receive services. There’s vicarious trauma that comes with that.

“I’ve had young men who have come into the program who’ve lost their lives, or re-offended,” Mitchell said. “Me personally, I have to be very cognizant of not absorbing all of that energy in order to keep myself healthy and be able to do other things I’ve got to do.”

Walls, the deputy city manager, said the newly approved blueprint accounts for the mental-health needs of the street-outreach team.

“Our Blueprint emphasizes the need for trauma and mental-health supports for those impacted by community gun violence,” she wrote in an email to The News-Gazette. “We also recognize that this includes those working directly with individuals and families who have been impacted by gun violence.

“Part of our selection process will be choosing an organization that provides these critical supports and training directly for those individuals who have ‘boots on the ground.’”