As violent crime surges in D.C., a new privately funded academy will provide 13 weeks of intensive training to violence intervention workers deployed on the front lines of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

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       The D.C. Peace Academy, launched Tuesday, offers education and other services to the people who are tasked with mediating conflicts and engaging one-on-one with those most at risk of committing crimes.

       The first academy cohort includes 25 workers from across the city who have at least six months of experience in the field and are members of violence intervention organizations that contract with the D.C. government. Street outreach and violence intervention workers are typically hired because of deep roots in the communities in which they work.

       The curriculum, developed in large part by local community leaders, is designed to enhance negotiation and conflict resolution skills, officials said. It also offers mental health services to those going through the course to help cope with the trauma they may experience through their work, which often comes with personal risk.

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       “This is the first time I really feel like we have something for us, by us,” Lashonia Thompson-El, executive director of Peace for DC, said at the Tuesday academy launch in Southeast Washington. “This program allows us to center the voices of those most central to gun violence.”

       The academy is privately funded by Peace for DC, a nonprofit founded by local restaurant owner Roger Marmet after his 22-year-old son, Tom, was killed by a stray bullet in 2018. The nonprofit has raised half a million dollars to support the academy, Marmet said, with each cohort of 25 people costing about $250,000.

       The funding goes toward teachers, life coaches, cognitive behavioral therapy and a payment of $150 per week to each participant to help with costs, such as child care and parking, while they’re enrolled in the course. Marmet said he hopes to the academy will have trained about 150 people by the end of 2023.

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       The launch comes at a critical moment in Washington. Homicides are up 7 percent compared with the same time last year, and summer, a season when crime traditionally spikes, is quickly approaching. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) is under mounting pressure to reverse the troubling rise in violence, with a contested primary election in a few weeks and many voters naming public safety as their chief concern. Critics have said Bowser lacks a singular plan to fight crime, with officials now conceding that her signature initiative, Building Blocks, was little more than a theory.

       Gun violence reduction plan recommends strategies to make D.C. safer

       A recent report commissioned by an independent D.C. agency offered a comprehensive gun violence reduction plan for the city, and recommended that the District increase the number of violence intervention workers and create an academy to train them. Top D.C. officials have not committed to following through on the plan but said it will play a role in their own work to develop a holistic strategy.

       D.C. Director of Gun Violence Prevention Linda Harllee Harper said the D.C. Peace Academy was an example of the power of collaboration between private organizations and the government, but added that the city is still working on developing a gun violence prevention plan. As part of that effort, the D.C. government has partnered with the University of the District of Columbia to launch its own four-week hybrid program to train cohorts of violence interrupters — which she described as “supplemental” to the Peace Academy.

       Nneka Grimes, a 32-year-old outreach worker in Ward 5 through the National Association for the Advancement of Returning Citizens, sat in a room on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Southeast Washington where she and 24 others received laptops for their first academy training. Grimes said she had received training through her organization, which contracts with the Office of the Attorney General, but is eager to learn more about how to teach violence interruption to people in her community.

       “I feel like I took my bachelor’s and this is my master’s class,” she said. “It’s the next level.”