2025 Annual Report
2025 Summary
Here is a brief overview of our goals and accomplishments this year.
Some of these points are discussed more thoroughly below.
Expanding Impact
2025 was a year dedicated to cultivating meaningful relationships with community partners. Halt Violence is committed to saving lives and changing minds. Through mediation, we work to squash beef among Black teens, young adults, and adults before conflict turns into violence. Our approach actively steers youth, young adults, and adults away from violence by addressing issues early and promoting accountability and understanding. Columbus recorded one of its lowest homicide totals in years, with 84 murders. This is an accomplishment we should all be proud of, and it reflects the power of collaboration, prevention, and community-led solutions.
In 2025, Halt Violence strengthened its commitment to violence prevention by securing significant public and private funding to support mentorship, trauma counseling, anger management, domestic violence intervention, and gun violence reduction initiatives.
The organization received $40,000 from the Office of Violence Prevention and $37,500 from Franklin County Children Services, which supported programming through September 4, 2025. Although discussions were anticipated regarding a larger RFP opportunity, internal agency changes and a lack of follow-up resulted in Halt Violence moving in a different direction. Halt Violence received the last $25,000 out of $100,000 of our remaining grant from The Wolfe Foundation. In addition to institutional funding, community partners and individual supporters played a vital role in advancing the mission. Contributions included $7,652.78 from Jeff Dickson, $6,500 from Rhema Family designated for gun violence reduction, $2,000 from Board Member Todd Kaufman, along with additional individual donations.
During 2025, Halt Violence experienced a 40-day period awaiting reimbursement funding, as well as one full month without active funding support. These temporary funding gaps directly impacted program capacity and explain fluctuations reflected in service and participation data during those periods.
Despite these challenges, Halt Violence remained committed to serving the community and maintaining core operations while pursuing sustainable funding solutions.
Halt Violence performed 50 conflict mediations in 2025. Thanks to our team, we were able to squash 66% of beefs that stopped murders, shootings and fights among black youth, black teens and black adults. However, we had 34% that we couldn't prevent. Of the types of beef, 72% stemmed from individual beefs, including 2% gang-related because of who individuals were associated with, 6% hood beefs, and 2% involving drug deals gone wrong. The remaining 28% were related to domestic violence. With our help, disputes were ceased among individuals, squads, gangs and even families! Our Street Mentors, through tireless efforts, are still pursuing the beefs that are still on going. These disputes are not simply forgotten.
For clarity, the level of beefs Halt Violence engaged in included the following: seven shootings, eight domestic violence incidents, one incident involving disrespect, six murders, four “he said/she said” disputes, fifteen fights, five verbal arguments, two incidents where guns were drawn, as well as an incident involving short-changing and theft.
This reflects the volume and seriousness of situations our team was actively managing.
Conflicts mediated: 50
Disputes not successfully resolved: 34%
Total participants enrolled: 101
Participant Demographics:
Sex: 73%. males, 27% females
Race: 74% Black, 20% White, 6% Hispanic
Service Allocations:
39% received Anger Management
27% received Trauma Counseling
40% received Mentorship
21% received Domestic Violence Classes
38% received Employment Opportunities
Partnerships
Halt Violence has positioned itself for success by creating and establishing strong working partnerships. Here are some of our partners for 2025. Adult Probation, Juvenile Probation, The Buckeye Ranch and The Juvenile Public Defender’s Office.
Donations, Grant Awards & Fundraising
Halt Violence raised $133,927 for 2025. We are grateful for the impact that we had in 2025 with 84 murders!
Violence Interventions and Meditations
It is an all-to-harsh reality that in Columbus, Ohio, there are countless teens and young adults for whom violence has become a part of life. Columbus has a serious need for violence intervention services and for programming that works with at-risk violent youth, young adults and adults. HALT VIOLENCE employs a fairly simple strategy to combat violence. First, we place great emphasis on building trust through responsiveness,compassion, and confidentiality.
At HALT VIOLENCE, we understand that trust is the keystone to creating strong social bonds. We have built significant trust in many of the communities in and around Columbus. One of the key elements in preserving this trust is our confidentiality policy. We do not share personally identifiable information with any other organizations. For our participants, our confidentiality policy is an important buffer. It facilitates open dialogue and makes our job easier.
Second, we will employ our most promising clients as Street Mentors—HALT VIOLENCE’s field workers whose primary function is to respond to calls, conduct meditations, and otherwise respond to needs within the community and build networks within the neighborhoods served.
Conclusion
If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact a representative of our organization by email at info@haltviolence.org.