One Second Collaborative targets Fort Worth youth gun violence. New leader explains how

An initiative to help combat youth gun violence in Fort Worth has a new director.

Quaniqua Carthan is the new program director of the One Second Collaborative, which has a mission to bring together grassroots organizations across Fort Worth to reduce youth gun violence.

Carthan says the One Second Collaborative provides tools to everyday people who may not consider themselves violence interrupters or social workers. The program will provide a space with training and educational support to help people make a difference in their communities, Carthan said.

“Everybody has the ability to touch a young person who might need support,” Carthan says.

As the program title suggests, that intervention can happen fast, she said.

“It only takes one second to connect,” Carthan said.

The One Second Collaborative will hold its inaugural Tarrant County Youth Gun Violence Prevention Workgroup Summit on Feb. 2-3 at the Omni Hotel in downtown Fort Worth.

The summit is an opportunity to hear from community members and identify goals and actions to disrupt the cycle of youth gun violence. It is open to individuals directly impacted by gun violence, those who lead efforts against gun violence, or people who care about the issue and want to make a difference, according to Carthan.

Registration for the event can be found on United Way of Tarrant County’s website.

The One Second Collaborative is run by the United Way, with support from the city, police officials and Tarrant County. It was started in 2022 when youth gun violence became a growing concern and city and county leaders held conversations on how to combat it.

According to Fort Worth police records, 10 young people between the ages of 1 and 18 lost their lives in shootings in 2023. Three of those who died were 17, one was 16, one was 15, four were 14 and one was 12. Seventeen adolescents or children were killed in shootings in the city in 2022 and 14 were killed in 2021, police records state.

Funding for the One Second Collaborative includes $1.9 million from the county and $4.4 million from the city sourced from federal American Rescue Plan Act funding in 2022.

The collaborative will focus on intervention, outreach, counseling services, mentoring, workforce education, community partnerships, and referrals for basic needs.

Carthan served as the interim program director since September and officially took on the role as program director in December.

Her vision for the collaborative is to elevate passion about combating gun violence in Fort Worth by strengthening and coordinating efforts across the city. This means she must first learn and understand more about what local organizations are doing, she said. Then she will work to provide support from the operational level, education and training.

Carthan also wants to be authentic to young people, recognizing their needs. That will involve understanding their everyday needs for things such as food and shelter and learning about their experiences at home, she said. And it means connecting with the organizations that identify students in need, such as community centers, the YMCA, or the Boys and Girls Club, she said.

“While we are not directly providing those supports, we are providing the opportunity for those organizations to grow, to expand in their knowledge and their understanding and their ability to reach out to those young people and their families,” Carthan said.

The collaborative also plans to provide other resources, such as work groups focused on mental health, communication, parent and caregiver education and mentor recruitment.

During the summit, young people will gather for a discussion on what they would like to see within the collaborative’s Youth Advisory Board. The collaborative will also take applications and nominations for the board and select individuals based on the criteria that’s being developed.

Last August, the collaborative invested $2.1 million with 18 organizations working to reduce youth gun violence. These organizations focus primarily on outreach, intervention and reentry from incarceration.

Melinda Hamilton is the co-founder of Mothers of Murdered Angels and says the funding helps provide resources, funding for her program’s yearly gala, and the spread of information about gun violence.

Mothers of Murdered Angels reaches out to grieving families, helps them through the grieving process, and raises awareness about gun violence through community outreach.

“We have free sessions, we have outings, we do events with the survivors, and that’s what United Way has given us an opportunity to do, but we do need more,” Hamilton said.

The ability of the One Second Collaborative to bring together programs working to prevent gun violence - whose organizers may not be aware of each other - will help, Hamilton says.

Strategies to Elevate People of Color is a nonprofit organization that operates the Fort Worth chapter of the My Brother’s Keeper initiative. It is a mentoring program that works with youth to help them turn away from violence in their lives. In weekly meetings, youth learn about violence prevention, address trauma, and hold other activities and informational sessions.

Rickie Clark is the executive director of Strategies to Elevate People of Color and will be a participant at the summit. He sees the summit as a way to help end the trend of youth gun violence through a committed effort from the community.

If people do not take action now, Clark says, Fort Worth may look like other cities like Boston, St. Louis, or Chicago where it seems people don’t care enough about their communities.

“When you’re in a community where young folks see that the people don’t care, they don’t care,” Clark said. “They need to know that we care enough to do something about it, and that’s why we’re doing it.”