Flagship Program
Anger to
Advocacy
Activist Incubator
Gun violence leaves a mark.
ATA is where young survivors decide what to do with it.
Anger to Advocacy is a fellowship for young survivors of gun violence ages 14 to 26. Whether you lost someone, were shot yourself, or grew up watching gun violence hollow out your community — your experience is not a backstory. It is a qualification.
ATA exists to meet you where that experience lives and build from it.
The simple truth ATA is built on:
Anger is not the problem. For young people who have been failed by the very systems that were supposed to protect them, anger is rational. It is information. And when it is channeled with the right tools, relationships, and training, it becomes one of the most powerful forces for change there is.
Trained as peer educators
Trained as community organizers
Trained as policy advocates
The fellowship is stipended, structured, and built around a core belief: survivors deserve to be compensated for the expertise their pain has given them.
The Fellowship — Three Parts
01
Education
Fellows build a deep, structural understanding of gun violence in America, grounded in their own lived experience and the historical and racial conditions that shape it.
02
Advocacy & Organizing Training
Fellows develop their leadership styles and build practical skills in community organizing, power-building, testimony, campaign strategy, and media engagement.
03
Project Period
Fellows move from training into action — organizing campaigns, town halls, and peer education sessions, and engaging directly with elected leaders at the local, state, and federal level.
Community Program
B.U.I.L.D. F.R.E.E.
A place-based initiative investing in the conditions young people need to live, lead, and thrive.
Place-Based Approach
BUILD FREE delivers concentrated, sustained programming inside three distinct geographies, chosen for their elevated rates of youth gun violence and the presence of underserved opportunity youth. Rather than operating diffusely, Youth Over Guns embeds community leaders, trains local young people, and builds lasting infrastructure within each region — ensuring that program outcomes are rooted in local context and trust.
Population Focus
BUILD FREE serves opportunity youth — young people who are, or are at risk of becoming, victims or perpetrators of gun violence. This includes young people who are disconnected from school or employment, involved in the justice system, or living in communities with concentrated poverty, disinvestment, and chronic exposure to violence.
Anchor Regions
California (primary)
Statewide in reach, primarily in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
New York
Across all five boroughs — the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.
Georgia
The Atlanta Metro region and its surrounding areas.
Program Domains
All five domains are delivered across each anchor region, adapted to local context and community partnerships.
Mentorship & Coaching
Long-term, relational support pairing opportunity youth with trained coaches who model alternative pathways and provide consistent accountability, skill-building, and emotional support.
Career Readiness
Hands-on workshops covering resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and interview navigation — practical tools that open economic pathways away from violence.
Health Literacy
Training young leaders to evaluate online health information, identify misinformation, locate evidence-based mental health resources, and support peers. Includes youth-led digital campaigns on mental health and the specific risks firearms pose during mental health crises.
Safety & Community
Workshops on navigating and avoiding gang involvement, naming the realities of neighborhood crime, and redirecting toward education, sports, and community leadership as sources of power and belonging.
Institutional Equity
Teach-ins that fill the gaps left by public school curricula — the history of racism, discrimination, and policing, and how that history shapes the distrust Black and Brown communities have toward institutions today. This context is foundational to understanding, and ultimately reducing, gun violence.
The name is a declaration and a destination. BUILD FREE names the transformation at the heart of this work: