In 2020, the United States was deeply affected by a nationwide surge in gun violence. Memphis was among the hardest hit cities: 291 Memphians lost their lives to murder. The years that followed were similarly devastating; an additional 1,147 people were murdered from 2021-2024.1 While Youth Villages’ services are delivered in 29 states and Washington, D.C., and we advocate nationally for improvements to child-serving systems, Memphis is our home. We cannot fulfill our mission of helping children and families live successfully when our own neighborhoods are not safe. We established Memphis Allies in 2022 to respond to the city’s gun violence crisis.
Memphis Allies is a collaborative initiative that brings together community groups to create safer neighborhoods in Memphis and Shelby County. Our name is purposeful: since the day we started, this initiative has been about finding ways to collaborate with other nonprofits, governments and anyone tackling this challenge. Over the last three years, Memphis Allies has demonstrated its ability to build strong partnerships, engage adults and youth at the highest risk of gun violence and keep them safe.
We focus on the highest risk individuals because this is what will reduce shootings as quickly as possible: targeted intervention for those most likely to commit them.
We envision a Memphis where anyone at high risk of being drawn into gun violence can choose a different path, with someone to walk alongside them and support them to stay safe and thrive.
We’ve grown from a handful of teams to more than 200 staff members working across five of the neighborhoods in Memphis most affected by gun violence (Raleigh-Frayser, Orange Mound, Hickory Hill, South Memphis and Whitehaven), engaging over 500 participants daily through two violence intervention models: SWITCH (Support with Intention to Create Hope) for adults and SWITCH Youth, a model that engages young people, their families and support systems. Both models include active outreach, work with Ally organizations and other activities that address the root causes of violence in the community.
Together, Memphis Allies works to:
• Identify individuals at highest risk of involvement in gun violence through street outreach, strategic use of data and referrals from justice system institutions and communitybased partners.
• Connect with them in trusting, transformative relationships with outreach specialists and life coaches.
• Serve them with the support they need to heal from underlying trauma, alter their circumstances, access new opportunities and change their lives.
We are encouraged by our early results: 69% of those we serve have been shot or shot at in the past, yet while actively engaged, 91% of participants have not incurred a new gun-related charge.
Our 2026-2030 strategic plan defines our vision for supporting lasting change. We aspire to be a foundational contributor in helping the city and county achieve their goal of reducing gun homicides by at least 10% annually and 40% over four years, ultimately helping Memphians feel safer in their neighborhoods and bolstering their confidence that Memphis is a place where families and businesses can build a future. Recent citywide momentum gives us reason to hope violence can decline even faster, as murders fell almost 30% from 2023 to 2024.1
These aren’t just statistics — they are lives preserved and futures rewritten. We believe Memphis can build on this progress to achieve the largest multi-year reduction in gun violence ever seen in a major American city, proving that significant investment in violence intervention can drive sustained change across the South and the nation.
To contribute to this citywide effort, our own goals for the next five years are to:
• Provide 800+ high-risk adults and young people per day with the effective support they need — keeping the majority of them safe, alive and free in the short term, and setting them up to thrive in the long term.
• Help build a coordinated citywide network of nonprofits engaged in this work — and cultivate trust in Memphis Allies in the neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.
• Secure $ 200 million to invest in our work — including public and private funding — and contribute to momentum across the country by creating a ‘proof point’ in Memphis that demonstrates the power of this work at scale in a southern city, sharing insights and experience from our work and helping the field establish a scalable, replicable model to reduce citywide gun violence in any locale.
While we celebrate our city’s progress, we remember one life lost is one too many, and we recognize the path to the Memphis we hope to help create requires sustained effort over time. Ultimately, we strive to help make our city the safest it has ever been — because Memphis is defined not by what we endure, but by our strength in overcoming it.
We knew when we launched this initiative it would be remarkably complex. But perhaps our most important lesson has been that, at its core, this work is also quite simple. It is about being there — for people, for communities, for partners and for our city. We promise to be there for, and with, Memphis, working alongside our Ally network, community partners, and the city and county government to ensure those at high risk of being drawn into gun violence can choose a different path, with someone to walk alongside them and support them to stay safe and thrive.