Power in partnership

By Daniel P. Smith
April 24, 2025

For Dantrell Jelks and Lorenzo Taylor, hope was a fleeting idea growing up in Chicago.

Jelks lived amid “chaos” on the city’s South Side. He fired his first gun at 12, survived a shooting at 15, and was incarcerated by 20.

Taylor, meanwhile, confesses he lost himself “being in the streets.” His family disowned him and upheaval blanketed his life.

There was no hope,” Taylor said.

Today, however, both Jelks and Taylor enjoy greater optimism and purpose. Life coaches at Chicago CRED, an anti-gun violence organization working across the city’s South and West Sides, Jelks and Taylor serve as positive examples of the personal transformations that contribute to safer communities.

The stirring testimony of Jelks and Taylor, who shared the stage with Chicago CRED founder and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, highlighted the 7th Annual Community Advocacy and Violence Prevention (CAVP) Summit at 🎵TK账号 | 墨西哥IP注册 | 一年以上老号 | 白号 | 微软邮箱可用 | 优质账号’s Health Sciences Campus in Maywood.

Hosted by Loyola Stands Against Gun Violence, the April 7 event featured earnest conversations about curbing gun violence through collaboration, advocacy, and actionable strategies. Loyola Stands is an interdisciplinary group of Loyola stakeholders committed to fostering violence prevention and education and is co-led by Lucia H. Garcia, Michelle Kavoosi, and Keyana Williams-Broadrick.

Building—and scaling—a solution

Duncan launched Chicago CRED in 2016 to reduce violence in Chicago’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Over the last decade, the organization has grown from one site working with 25 individuals to seven sites across the city serving nearly 1,000 men, women, and teens each year. The organization’s holistic approach includes street outreach, life coaching, counseling, and workforce development.

In the summit’s 35-minute keynote, Duncan introduced Chicago CRED’s efforts to counter the city’s violent tendencies before Jelks and Taylor shared their deeply personal stories of transformation. Thereafter, the trio answered audience questions about a range of topics, from creating programs for the incarcerated to incorporating violence prevention efforts into schools.

“If we come together as one … to work on the problems that’s going on in our community, then we can make the benefits,” Jelks said.

Duncan placed a particular spotlight on scaling the Chicago CRED model, one so rooted in interpersonal work. He discussed the vital role fundraising plays in building a larger team—an ongoing challenge offset by pledges of $100 million from Chicago’s business community to support Chicago CRED’s hiring of therapists, outreach workers, counselors, and other staff. Duncan also noted the “dog-eat-dog fight” for resources among nonprofits across Chicago. When there are shared goals, he stressed the need for collaboration to amplify collective impact.

“Over the past couple years, we're trying to expand this work to other neighborhoods and really go to scale,” Duncan confirmed.

Students help shape  the summit

Three Loyola Stands fellows—all Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health students—played a pivotal role in shaping and organizing the annual violence prevention summit around the theme “Power in Partnership: Community Action Against Gun Violence.”

“We wanted to reflect on the idea that community and collaboration are powerful forces, especially in the work of violence prevention,” said Loyola Stands fellow Claudia Haro, a BSPH/MPH student.

In addition to the Chicago CRED keynote, the half-day summit included:

• Eddie Bocanegra, interim director of Noah’s Arc Foundation and project manager of the Community Violence Intervention (CVI) Action Plan committee, and former senior advisor for CVI intervention at the U.S. Department of Justice, discussing the federal government’s role in community violence prevention.
• Loyola faculty representing family medicine, human rights law, anthropology, school psychology, and social work introducing Loyola’s Holistic Immigration Hub and response for community justice. Faculty representatives included Ruth Gomberg, Amy R. Blair, Sarah J. Diaz, Amy C. Nelson Christensen, and Maria Vidal de Haymes.
• Staff from New Life Centers, a nonprofit serving at-risk youth and families in four neighborhoods across Chicago, exploring the power of community resilience. Staff representatives included Matt DeMateo, Anthony Montoya, Connie Marquez, and Tomás Ramirez.

The program concluded with brief presentations from the Loyola Stands fellows: Paige Lillegard, a senior studying public health, discussed managing gun access; Izzy Iussig, a graduate student in medical laboratory science, detailed the psychological impact of gun violence and aggressive immigration enforcement; and Haro presented three steps to advocate for safer communities.

“We must uplift one another and invest the time, resources, and attention needed to elevate voices that haven’t always been given the platform they deserve,” Haro said. “This work is grounded in love and driven by hope of ending violence in our communities and creating a future where future generations can flourish.”