Community organizations commit to summer youth anti-violence initiatives

Indianapolis, Indiana – In the MLT Love Garden at the Mackida Loveal & Trip Outreach Center in the 3400 block of North Sherman Drive, LaShauna Triplett spent her Memorial Day afternoon watering the tomatoes, cabbage, and strawberries that young people will soon be transplanting and caring for.

“We are going to teach youth agriculture, agribusiness, and culinary along with composting,” said Triplett from beneath her straw hat. “We are thinking outside of the box, giving them alternatives to crimes, giving them mental health support by connecting them back to the earth.”

Vivian Muhammad of Elephants Garden Urban Farm is Triplett’s business partner.

“They will also be learning how to procure, learning how to create value-added products, working in the farm stand, working in our health and beauty bodega, so they’ll be getting training in soft skills but they’ll see how the agriculture can be transformed into another form of money for them,” she said.

The City of Indianapolis has committed $15 million this year to fight crime at the grassroots level, and the MLT Center and Elephant Gardens are just two of the local organizations that have received financing for community anti-violence initiatives from the city.

Mayor Joe Hogsett declared last week that his government would provide another $15 million in funding to combat violence.

“Some of these programs that are being currently implemented right now are being effective even though we’re seeing this high number of shootings,” said Erik Davenport of Resources Organized in Community, “because you must take into consideration that if these programs were not implemented, there would probably be a much higher level of gun violence in our community.”

A 14-year-old was recently detained in Indianapolis for his suspected involvement in an armed carjacking; the week before, another 14-year-old was shot on the east side; and just last week, a 17-year-old was detained after being seen wandering around a motel with an AR-15 weapon.

In Indianapolis, at least ten kids have died from gunshot wounds so far this year.

Two of those fatalities have been looked into as accidental self-inflicted fatal wounds brought on by adults leaving unsecured firearms close to kids.

“We’re going to be working to do what I would like to call a gun awareness course,” said Davenport, “where what we really want to start talking about the use of a firearm, what it was designed to do, we want to talk about some gun safety issues, what do you do when you come across a gun, we want to talk to some parents in households if a mom finds a gun, how to handle it, what to do with it because some parents don’t want to call the police. We still want to give them that knowledge on gun safety how to handle a gun, who to call, some protocols for gun safety.”

The MLT Center’s backyard features a chicken coop with a dozen hens that lay fresh eggs every day while being watched after by two goats that young clients look after.

“I would say raising animals in the animal husbandry program has taught them empathy, its teaching compassion,” said Triplett. “It is increasing their social skills and also strengthening their social-emotional learning because they are learning how to connect with something that is dependent on them to feed them, to nurture them.”

The MLT Center’s backyard features a chicken coop with a dozen hens that lay fresh eggs every day while being watched after by two goats that young clients look after.

“Fridays they’ll be cooking dinner for their parents and letting their parents in on that fresh cooked food and showing them how simple it is,” she said.