While investigations continue into multiple shootings that occurred early Sunday morning in South Bend a group is trying to combat this kind of violence. An Anti-Violence Summit was held at the Century Center Sunday evening. It was planned long before the news broke of the shootings overnight but it was planned with violence like this in mind. About 5 months ago the United Religious Community of St. Joseph County said "something must be done."
Talking about the recent shootings in South Bend, organizer of the summit, Carol Mayernick, said, "it highlights the importance of the community working together."
Sunday they brought Reverends, social workers, and other presenters together to share their thoughts for reducing the violence. Attendees at the anti-violence summit listened to speakers talk about everything from anger management to relationship building. Gursharan Singh said, "I got fascinated in a way because I wanted to know what everyone else's like insight was on like religion and how we can bring everyone together instead of like hating." And attendee Erika Lenoir said, "we have a lot of violence going on and if we could come together and discuss things together we might be able to solve a few things."
Everyone at the anti-violence summit wants to see far less violence in the future but Mayernick admits it won't happen just from Sunday's summit. "Anything that can be done to help is going to help. But it takes a lot of many facets and parts of the community to work together." And once everyone comes together they have to figure out exactly how to reduce the violence. "The sad thing is we really need to come up with some creative ways to reach out to those parts of the community that might be most vulnerable," said Mayernick. But the first step is just getting people to participate in things like Sunday's summit and getting them involved in anti-violence efforts.
This was the first anti-violence summit the United Religious Community of St. Joseph County put on but Mayernick said they want to follow it up with other events. If you'd like to get involved she said contact your local church or called the United Religious Community at 282-2397.
