Anti-violence coalition gets a boost with $10,000 gift from Duke

Grant represents biggest bequest for Durham group founded in ’92

BY TAMMY GRUBB tgrubb@heraldsun.com; 419-5103

The Duke University Office of Community Affairs fulfilled the university's pledge to the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham last week, giving the local nonprofit $10,000, officials reported.

The funding will be used to support violence prevention activities and partnerships, and to pay a small stipend to the group's now-volunteer outreach coordinator, Marcia Owen. The gift is the largest ever received by the coalition and was contingent upon the group's collecting at least $15,000 in donations from local congregations, charitable groups and individuals.

"We are motivated by a crisis in gun violence. Stopping this violence is challenging, frustrating work, and requires ongoing leadership," said the Rev. Mel Williams, pastor of Watts Street Baptist Church.

"We are deeply grateful to Duke University's Office of Community Affairs, the Triangle United Way, Triangle Community Foundation, and the many congregations and individuals whose generosity will help curb the current epidemic of gun deaths in Durham," he said.

Williams and Leslie Dunbar founded the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham in 1992 "to bear witness to the sanctity of life" and to act against violence. As part of that mission, the group works to build support for its efforts among Durham's faith, government, education, health and advocacy agencies.

The coalition's work with Durham Congregations in Action and Parents of Murdered Children, for instance, has resulted in more than 200 prayer vigils being held at the sites of violent deaths in Durham. The vigils are held to bring people together to pray for the victim; comfort the family, friends and neighbors; and pray for peace and healing.

Another, more recent effort is the Prayer Partnerships program, which brings together families of homicide victims and members of the faith community to pray and ease the "isolation of grief and burden of loss."

In the justice system, "there's really nobody representing that family," Owen said. "It's very lonely ... these families having to endure the violent loss of life."

The group also holds gun violence seminars for congregations and civic and school groups.

According to the N.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, during 1999 and 2000, 131 children under the age of 17 died from gunshot wounds in North Carolina. Durham County led the state, with the second-highest number of youth gun deaths and the highest per capita percentage of overall gun deaths.

The Religious Coalition's goal, in partnership with the Durham Police Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office through Project Safe Neighborhoods, is to reduce the number of gun-related crimes, including fatal shootings, by 20 percent this year and by 50 percent in 2005.

The coalition also has partnered with Durham Congregations in Action and the Durham County Criminal Justice Resource Center to begin the Reconciliation and Re-entry Ministry, which helps recently released felons find the resources they need to succeed in the community.

And it sponsors the Hands Without Guns program, an educational art activity that urges parents and children "to pledge to use their hands for creation and not destruction," Owen said. The children create banners, imprinting them with their handprints, their names and what they like to do with their hands. One of the funniest comments in recent memory, she said, was from one young boy who wrote that he liked to use his hands to eat food.

Owen said the coalition had used those banners to do things like wrap churches in order to raise awareness about gun violence. This weekend, the group took a 1,000-foot banner bearing the children's messages to Washington, D.C., for the Mother's Day March to Halt the Assault.

The faith community, Owen said, needs to be a resource for finding solutions to some of the problems in Durham.

One way it can help, she said, is "by building wonderful and genuine relationships with different public agencies [so] we can develop ministries that can really utilize the resources ... available in the Durham faith community."

The coalition also provides hospitality, she said, by sharing with people and "breaking bread together."

"Not only do you open your heart, you open your home," Owen said. "As a mother, the most important thing is our children's safety. ... that is a fundamental human right. And I feel we have denied that right to many of the children in this town."

ABOUT THE COALITION

The Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham meets every month at Lakewood United Methodist Church to coordinate its anti-violence and outreach efforts. The meetings are led by the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church, and Bernadette Page, an emergency physician at Duke University Medical Center and a member of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church.

The group's next meeting will be held at noon on May 27 at Lakewood United Methodist Church, located at the corner of Chapel Hill Road and Huron Street. Lunch will be served.

For more information, contact Marcia Owen, outreach coordinator, at 489-3531 or via e-mail at mowen8@nc.rr.com.

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