‘We see no signs of slowing down’
Sandy Hook Promise marks 10 years of ‘saving lives every day’
NEWTOWN — One month to the day that 26 women and children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a small group of families who had lost loved ones had an announcement to make.
“That day was shrouded in shock and trauma … I was there in body only,” said Mark Barden, the father of a slain first-grade boy, referring to Jan. 14, 2012, as the families spoke. “I believed in the nucleus — in the genesis of what was forming — but I was unable to contribute anything meaningful other than to share my story.”
What was forming was the Sandy Hook Promise, a homegrown nonprofit that on Saturday celebrated its 10th anniversary, The organization has since become one of the highest profile gun violence prevention groups of its kind in the country.
How did a group that consisted of 10 grieving people on a shoestring budget grow into a $21 million organization with more than 100 employees?
The short answer is that it took time for students, educators and communities to see the programs from Sandy Hook Promise called “Know the Signs” make a difference.
“In the early days, there was a moment where we were out of funds and we were thinking, ‘We can’t continue like this.’ But (we) were able to hobble along until we got our feet under us and made some progress and got the support of folks who believed that we could achieve these positive public safety outcomes,” Barden said.
“As we started to get success stories and positive metrics from schools, administrators started to see our programs having an impact on bullying and school shootings and suicides,” he said.
Today the organization that Barden started with Nicole Hockley, the mother of another slain first-grade boy, and Bill Sherlach, the husband of the slain school psychologist, claims credit for “averting at least 12 credible planned school shooting attacks” through its peer-based programs that teach youth to intervene when another teen is threatening harm.
“Even during our darkest time, we knew we had to do something meaningful to honor our loved ones and prevent these tragedies from happening to others,” Hockley, CEO of Sandy Hook Promise, said in a statement. “Our ‘Know the Signs’ programs save lives every day, sparing other families from the unspeakable pain of having a loved one taken by preventable violence.”
The Sandy Hook Promise was in the headlines last week when a 2018 federal bill it wrote that was signed into law by President Donald Trump received $118 million in new funding.
Sandy Hook Promise’s STOP School Violence Act, which was part of a $1.7 trillion spending bill signed by President Joe Biden, was designed to fund initiatives such as its signature “Say Something” programs to identify violence before it happens by teaching youth the early warning signs that a peer is about to commit
harm and to tell a trusted adult.
The new funding will pay for anonymous reporting systems of the type launched in 2018 by Sandy Hook Promise. The nonprofit’s nationwide tip system allows students to share a concern about a peer’s red-flag behavior with a Florida-based hotline center, which vets the information and refers it to appropriate
authorities.
As a result, Barden said, Sandy Hook Promise “lives on its own and sustains itself,” because “we have clear evidence of a model that is working.”
“We see no signs of slowing down,” he said.