My Voice. Our Community. is a national awareness campaign focused on spreading a simple message: we all have a role to play in reducing the violence that traumatizes our communities.

While you’ve probably seen public awareness campaigns, you haven’t seen one quite like this. Often times, other campaigns rely on distributing public service announcements (PSAs) throughout the country without changing the message or outreach strategies to meet the unique needs of each community. Beyond that, they often focus solely on increasing awareness and neglect to provide an opportunity for people to engage with the campaign beyond simply being aware of the message.

What makes this campaign so different? You do.

My Voice. Our Community. relies on trusted voices within a community to spread messages the community needs, when they need them, and in ways that make the most sense for the people living in that community.

The campaign provides people like you— community organizers, public safety professionals, nonprofit leaders, business owners, pastors, local media personalities, engaged college students, or anyone else who feels compelled to make their voice heard—with a downloadable toolkit of resources and information you can use to build partnerships, support existing violence reduction efforts, start conversations, and generate long-term progress in your community.

The community toolkit is the heart of the My Voice. Our Community. campaign. Available in English and Spanish, it includes video and audio PSAs, logos, t-shirt designs, customizable posters, shareable images, and much more, all of which have been designed for you to use in whatever way you desire to spread the campaign’s unifying message. The toolkit provides virtually unlimited flexibility for ways that people can join the movement, engage with the campaign, and take action. Imagination is the only limitation.

To maximize the campaign’s impact throughout the country, we encourage community leaders to gain a clear understanding of its powerful message, and to work together to develop an outreach strategy that brings community partners together, leverages everyone’s abilities, and ensures the message is spread effectively throughout the community.

Explore the Community Campaign Guidance to learn more about the program’s background, the multi-faceted research that went into crafting this initiative, and ideas and advice to inspire you to effectively implement a My Voice. Our Community. campaign in your community.

Arthur Ashe once said, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Not everyone can dedicate their lives to fighting crime or community leadership, but everyone has a voice and every voice—no matter how soft or loud—has the potential to uplift a community, even if it’s just one person at a time.  Start sharing yours

Overcoming Cynical Resignation

VCPI conducted an extensive research program at the beginning of this initiative to uncover what motivates people to take action in violence reduction, what concerns they have about violence in their communities, and what messaging and strategies would likely be effective.

The research spanned many months between 2019 and 2020 and leveraged a variety of tools to gather qualitative and quantitative information and feedback including the development of a national advisory board, the dissemination of a nationwide public safety poll among key constituencies, and in-depth market research on target audience behaviors and preferences.

A lot of important findings were made during the research, but the key takeaway was that people across the nation—regardless of socioeconomic background, race, gender, ethnicity, etc.— are affected by a trifecta of underinformed viewpoints, ideological defensiveness, and emotional fatigue which combine to create a pervasive public mindset of “cynical resignation.”

This mindset can cause people to misinterpret positive messages or reject them outright, making it very difficult for public safety initiatives to break through. As such, any campaign that seeks to reach people about these issues must:

• come from trusted voices within the community;
• not over promise on what is possible; and
• not ask people to do too much—only what is within their individual capacity.

My Voice. Our Community. has been designed with this understanding in mind, and was specifically
created to provide community leaders and public safety professionals with tools that can help them break through the cynical resignation and effectively reach people in their communities.

Community Safety Collaborative

National Support. Local Implementation.