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 83 murders. This is an accomplishment we should all be proud of, and it reflects the power of collaboration, prevention, and community-led solutions.

Specifically, in 2025, Halt Violence secured several funding sources to support its violence prevention efforts. These included a $40,000 grant from the Office of Violence Prevention; $37,500 from Franklin County Children Services, which covered three quarters of the year until September 4, 2025; and $25,000 from The Wolfe Foundation. Additional donations included $7,652.78 from Jeff Dickson, $6,500 from Rhema Family for gun violence reduction, $2,000 from our board member Todd Kaufman and other individual contributions.

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.

​Halt Violence enrolled 103 participants.

39% of clients received Anger Management

27% of clients received Trauma Counseling

40% of clients received Mentorship

21% of clients received Domestic Violence classes

38% of clients 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 $149,138.59 for 2025. We are grateful for the impact that we had in 2025 with 83 murders!
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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.