Our Impact

Within our community, we have created a culture of mutually supportive, ongoing evaluation in which community members work together to hold ourselves and our families and peers accountable. 

Key to this culture of supportive evaluation is the loving, clear, and restorative ways that we learn to talk with one another and campaign for peace within our networks. 

Everyone works together to realize our evidence-based outcomes as we organize and educate to be PRESENT, WELL and SAFE. The evaluative measures, metrics, milestones, and other data on this impact web-page root within our outcomes.

As we make clear in the "Milestones" section of this web-page below, this work is very challenging and it takes time to reach our milestones. Moreover, holding ourselves accountable in a caring and de-escalated manner for mistakes is a tough enterprise and we lift ourselves up while practicing restorative justice every day of our lives.

We a part of the Baltimore City Schools Partners in Education (PIE) initiative, and currently, we work with children and youth who attend ten schools, including City Springs, Johnson Square, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, KIPP, Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, Roland Park, Digital Harbor, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Reach, and Carver. Because of FERPA confidentiality restrictions, involving releasing data to staff who do not directly have children in a particular school, we gain data about our city students' progress through their parents in our Parents Peacemakers programs.

We apply mixed qualitative and quantitative methods to measure the impact of our programming on enrollees, gain data, look for patterns, assess milestones, and delineate the percentage of community members annually that reach each of our 25 metrics listed on this web-page:

• Focus groups: We rely on self-reporting in quarterly and annual focus groups and individual counseling sessions about community members' reduction of violent incidents and wellness.

• Surveys: We rely on self-reporting using surveys (written or spoken aloud if the community members is challenged by literacy issues or reluctance to write or record) with both multiple choice and open-ended questions (including "Peace Tracker" forms, which are described below).

• Observations: We rely on observations of transformed behavior by adult staff, parents, and other family members.

• Investigative research: We regularly probe archival research in investigative journalism (daily, weekly, and monthly newspapers and magazines) as well as court and law enforcement records that document incidences of violence within the areas that we serve and match these records with self-reporting. 

• Digital resources. We vigorously track daily criminal activity on the Citizen App and other similar digital resources, which report infractions each day in the zip codes that our programming covers with live, up-to-the-minute textual articles and video drawn from citizens' accounts and information from police scanners (and other governmental and news sources). We then correlate this daily data with our personnel information to gauge whether anyone enrolled in our programming was involved with these infractions. If they were--or if a family member was involved--we carefully record the data in the enrollee's case management files. The immediacy of this tool also gives us data that we use to conduct conflict mediations and healing circles.

Each month, community members within our Peacemakers programs fill out a confidential written "Peace Tracker" form that describes at least 3 incidents within the month in which they community-organized for peace and justice by using their peacemaking training to mediate a conflict, de-escalate, and find peace within relationships. 

Some of our Peacemakers groups work on special campaign organizing projects like our "Some of their stories involve finding inner peace and working through conflicts within themselves. Some involve working through conflicts with other people. A few community members submit Peace Trackers in audio form due to literacy issues. Staff members converse with community members about what is said in the Peace Trackers within select counseling sessions. These Peace Trackers also provide ongoing stories about how community members elevate their leadership as peacemakers and achieve nonviolence. 

Community members' word-of-mouth and video campaigns have decisively helped stem the tide of violence and promote wellness within the lives of the community members that Wisdom Projects serves each year. In turn, these people's campaigns have reached scores more individuals within their familial and peer networks.

Using information from their training and evaluations, community members develop informational campaigns about peacemaking and wellness. These campaigns disseminate information by word-of-mouth or within social media posts, online chat group discussions, or video uploads to private online groups. 

Many of these campaigns occur privately within community members' closed familial or social networks. The privacy helps protect and uphold the confidentiality of community members who may have arrest or conviction records or who may be discussing sensitive information amongst themselves. The emphasis on privacy also helps community members avoid censure and mistreatment from people in their community who are not committed to nonviolence and who sometimes mock the peacemaking efforts of community members.

No campaigns include mention of major crimes (such as murder, rape, assault, burglary, larceny, robbery, arson, vandalism, trafficking, drug commerce, and kidnapping), and neither Wisdom Projects or community members are harboring or abetting criminal activity of any kind. 

Addiction and substance use disorder are major factors in verbal and physical violence for our community members. 

Approximately 68 percent of our adult enrollees experience addiction. 

Since 2019, we have helped 88 community members commit to recovery with referrals and scholarships for in-patient and out-patient treatment and recommendations to attend daily, weekly, or monthly Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholic Anonymous, and Gambling Anonymous meetings. 

However, many still relapse and the challenges in this area persist.

At a time when upwards of 300 killings occurred each year in the city (with several per week oftentimes), and the suicide rate rose in 2022 by 8 percent, since we began our work in 2019, no one enrolled in our current programming has endured homicides and suicides due to gun violence or people-to-people perpetrated incidents of violence.

Since 2019, only 1 family out of all those enrolled in our programs has been evicted due to a breach of lease due to violence. This statistic is important because housing insecurity stands as one of the biggest barriers to peaceful living for the population that we serve in the housing projects. Helping them maintain housing by not breaching their leases' nonviolence requirements is one of our most important missions.

In 2019, in our conversations with community members, we discovered that violence often roots in problematic, un-healed relationships and aggressive engagement between family members within the home. As a result of our intensive education in de-escalation techniques, since 2019, each year over 90 percent of community members tell us that they are achieving more peace within their familial and intergenerational relationships in the home. This peace has helped them mend bridges, strengthen relationships, heal broken ties, and, ultimately, maintain nonviolence within their families.

 In 2019, 41 percent of our enrollees reported having access to guns. 

By the summer of 2023, approximately the same percentage of enrollees reported legally registering their firearms and storing them safely in locked receptacles away from youth.

12 percent reported using nearby Washington, D.C.'s Voluntary Surrender of Firearms program to disarm without fear of prosecution. 

Washington D.C. has the Safe Harbor Act that allows individuals to surrender firearms without fear of being charged. The State of Maryland and Baltimore City do not have a similar statute at the time of this writing.

When we began our work, the rate of domestic violence and intimate partner violence was high among community members at 46 percent. This meant that almost half of enrolled community members were involved in monthly incidents of domestic violence and intimate partner violence each year. By the beginning of 2022, we reduced the rate to 13 percent and holding. 

When we began our work, 42 percent of middle and high school aged youth in our programming had contact with the criminal or juvenile justice systems through arrest. By the beginning of 2023, only 4 percent of enrolled youth were arrested and, since 2020, only 3 youth enrollees have been convicted of crimes. 

For youth and young adults aged 11-24, we reduced the number of contacts with the juvenile or criminal justice system to 12 percent from a high of 32 percent when we first began our project.

Many adult enrollees have been impacted by the criminal justice system through arrest, conviction, or incarceration or their relatives have endured these challenges (approximately 65 percent of enrollees). Since 2021, we have reduced the number of these challenges among our adult community members to 6 percent. 

24 percent of our adult population are queer and 12 percent are trans. 

All of our queer and trans community members report high rates of physical violence and sexual violence. These community members each reported at least 5 incidents of violence against them every quarter of the year--an average of 20 incidents per year for each LGBTQ community member.

By the summer of 2023, with the help of our intensive focus on affirmation, acceptance, setting boundaries, peer support, consent, and avoidance of unsafe locales and people, these community members reported an average of 5 incidents each of violence against them in 2023, 2024, and 2025. 

Many of our LGBTQ members did not know where to access affirming peer support or care and we provided healing referrals. 

These community members also reported improved capacities to enter recovery for addiction as they took advantage of our referrals for mental health treatment.

We have drastically reduced incidents of verbal violence, including harassment, bullying, and intimidation. At the outset of our work, 61 percent of all enrolled youth and adults reported involvement in verbal violence. By 2022, 23 percent of enrollees reported involvement in this violence and holding.

Addiction and substance use disorder are major factors in verbal and physical violence for our community members. 

Approximately 68 percent of our adult enrollees experience addiction. 

Since 2019, we have helped 88 community members commit to recovery with referrals and scholarships for in-patient and out-patient treatment and recommendations to attend daily, weekly, or monthly Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholic Anonymous, and Gambling Anonymous meetings. 

However, many still relapse and the challenges in this area persist.

11. Ending Corporal Punishment in the Home

Corporal punishment (physical attacks) by parents to their children was a serious problem for 81 percent of our enrollees when we first surveyed them in 2019. 

By the summer of 2023, only approximately 11 percent (and holding) of our enrolled parents reported resorting to corporal punishment to address their children's behavioral problems. 

Enrollees reported applying our conflict resolution, de-escalation, and positive, strengths-centered accountability measures to uplift their children when they make mistakes.

Enrollees also benefited from our emphasis on structured home-life where expectations and boundaries are set preventatively for almost every aspect of family life (such as cleaning, playing, and meal time). 

Thus, rather than a chaotic environment that breeds aggression, a measured and structured environment helps to control behavior and create concrete times and spaces for bonding.

By the end of 2023, we had helped 74 community members (both youth and adults) enter longterm Psychiatric Rehabilitation Programs and we continue to help ten community members in this regard annually. 

We also help them use or seek counseling, mindfulness, and Social and Emotional Learning in tandem with medical interventions (like medication) to find inner peace in their mental health.

Psychiatric Rehabilitation has been key to uplifting the approximately 30 percent of community members that self-report having serious, ongoing mental health conditions like depression and bipolar disorder.

Each year, approximately 82 percent and holding of enrollees consistently report reductions in the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of our programming's whole-community emphasis equitable, non-judgmental, caring healing and specific techniques like de-escalation and conflict mediation.

Community members report that being calmer and managing their senses of panic, stress, and anxiety have helped them maintain employment, become job-ready, improve their relationships, and maintain their mental and physical health. 

By 2022, 80 percent of our enrollees praised their own leadership capacities, consistently noting the effectiveness of their ability to move their family members and peers to work through conflicts peacefully and de-escalate in challenging situations. 

Our community education, community organizing, and community healing overwhelmingly involves helping people to feel good about themselves as whole, productive people. 

Our asset-driven, affirmation-centered work is key to creating peace within their lives.

By 2022, 76 percent of our enrollees reported a more accepting and affirming sense of their personhood with many community members sharing that they have healthier visions and understandings of their abilities, identities, and potential.

Affirming peer support is also key to managing and coping with mental health challenges like PTSD, depression, stress, and anxiety that challenge out community members.

Poverty remains the most significant barrier to peaceful living for our enrollees, and ongoing governmental policies that dis-enfranchise them continue to exacerbate our efforts. 

Yet, each year, approximately 70 percent of our enrollees report that our wrap-around services (like limited rental assistance, transportation, phone-replacement, support with administrative forms, and help with replacement of broken or outmoded household appliances) have helped them mitigate some of the effects of poverty as they prevent violence in their lives.

Racism (and other forms of bias) are consistent barriers to peace and wellness for Black and Brown youth and adults in the United States and in our community.

Within interactions with police or with officials in their rental offices, agencies, government, institutions, and schools, community members frequently report bias. 

Each year, 90 percent of our community members report that our work has helped them de-escalate in the face of bias to protect their mental and physical health.

Each year, 83 percent of our youth enrollees report that our emphasis on de-escalation, mindfulness (calm and focused awareness), and conflict resolution has improved their grades in school and reduced truancy, suspension, and expulsion.

They also report increased ability to cope with and/or avoid toxic conflicts and aggression from their peers in school. 

See more about this milestone under "Enhanced Performance in School" below.

Research (some of which is compiled at this web-page) shows that a nutrient-rich, fresh healthy diet helps to prevent aggressive and violent behavior. 

Each year, over 90 percent of community members praise our Foodways Initiative, citing the ways that it makes them feel less agitated and aggressive while teaching them about the vital role that nutrition plays in their wellness. 

We serve one healthy, fresh, nutrient rich meal at every healing circle, learning session, and community gathering. These meals include low sodium and sugar with an emphasis on lean proteins, vegetables, fruit, and water (with the occasional fun snacks) according to Michelle Obama's MyPlate initiative. 

Community members report that our Foodways Initiative also helps them mitigate food insecurity borne of poverty and the lack of a grocery store in the neighborhood (a barrier that advocates call "food deserts") within walking distance or accessible by a bus ride that takes a half an hour or less.

Disease prevention goes hand-in-hand with violence prevention. 

Within our networks, we have led the way in encouraging community members to vaccinate against diseases (including COVID-19), while masking, hand-washing, sanitizing, and protecting themselves from STIs through safe sex materials like condoms and dental dams. 

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we began providing free KN95 and N95 masks and nitrile gloves, and we still provide these items today. We were one of the earliest community organizations devoted to these health practices in the city. 

From 2020 to 2023 we also provided free FDA-approved COVID-19 self-tests. 

Overwhelmingly, community members praise these efforts for their role in eliminating barriers as they uplift their capacities for disease prevention.

We still need to push for greater impact in ending community members' involvement in felonies like theft and robbery.

Rising inequalities and cost of living led to a spike in arrests of community members for robberies in particular from 2023 to 2024. 

From 2020-2023, 36 percent of adults and 15 percent of youth enrolled in our programming were involved in robberies of goods and food. 

By the end of 2024, only 30 percent of adults and 12 percent of youth were involved in these felonies and we believe the continuing lack of affordability in US goods, foods, and services drives this continuing problem.

Gaining funding to increase our wrap-around services will aid in greater achievement of this milestone.

Sex trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to make a person engage in commercial sexual acts. 

Under U.S. law, any minor (person under the age of 18) involved in commercial sex is considered a victim of sex trafficking, regardless of whether force, fraud, or coercion was used. 

Often these crimes against minors or young adults involve placing them in compromising adult situations through extortion by way of elaborate pretexts like parties or celebrations. (For example, adult family and friends of one minor in our community illegally manipulated the youth to have their 18th birthday party at a strip club where alcohol and commercial sex with adults and other minors was present). 

Other variations of this crime involve traveling to hotel parties in-state or out-of-state to commit the abuse. 

Like our larger American society, and like international contexts, our community has a grave problem with sex trafficking of adolescents and young adults. 

When we began our work, approximately 35 percent of youth aged 14-18 reported being sex trafficked. Or we discovered through everyday fieldwork that this percentage of youth were trafficked. 

The numbers have, unfortunately, remained the same to-date. 

The major impediment to this problem is that we have local, regional, and national cultures that are heavily involved in the predation of children and young adults.

Many of our community members struggle to view this as a serious problem. Some still blame children for being coerced and groomed. Others still view child victims and survivors as "underage adults" instead of children and do not take this crime seriously. 

We are stepping up our efforts to stem the tide of this abuse with renewed peer counseling and strategies like moving youth who struggle with parental support to job corps programming. 

But, even here, the obstacles are severe. In the middle of 2025, we discovered that many job corps programs were themselves being investigated for child abuse and rape and closed down.

Sadly, for the same reasons explained in our comments on sex trafficking, this problem continues to harm 35 percent of our adolescent enrollees. 

We learn of this challenge by self-reporting and in the course of our fieldwork when an incident occurs.

We believe that many incidents are not reported.

Furthermore, many youth and adults report being confused about what constitutes sexual assault and rape. When we say that ALL unconsensual sexual contact is sexual assault and rape, they are sometimes resistant to this definition. Further still, when we say that no minor can consent to sex with an adult, many still blame the minor even when they say that the adult shares the most culpability.

These confusions and resistances make success in this area challenging and we are increasing our efforts to educate about consent and speak out against victim-blaming.

The depth of national, regional, and local "rape culture" is a grave impediment to gaining viable outcomes here. 

We have brought the percentage of adults challenged by this problem down from 26 percent to 13 percent, and discovered that there was a strong correlation between domestic and intimate partner violence and sexual assault/rape.

Sadly, the children that are groomed for sexual abuse and trafficking still stands at 35 percent. 

Consequently, in 2025, we began to introduce greater education and advocacy about consent and sexual safety into our afterschool programming with an intent to bring these numbers down.