Circle Up: Empowering Young People to Prevent Violence and Restore Community (2025-present)

Circle Up! empowers youth and emerging adults as “circle keepers” who lead community-building circles to strengthen a sense of belonging and empathy across differences. The project establishes circle-keeping programs within 5 middle/high schools and develops the leadership of new circle-keepers in the Springfield community.

Circle Up trains and coaches youth and young adult “circle keepers”—facilitators of circles that focus on weaving community, strengthening connections among people of all walks of life, and fostering empathy and listening skills across differences. Within schools, the project builds on the work developed through our BRAVE Schools initiative. In the broader community, Karuna is partnering with the New North Citizens’ Council (NNCC) in Springfield, MA to lead circle-keeping trainings for youth, young adults, and NNCC staff.

With the overall purpose of supporting youth and young adults within and beyond the context of local schools and organizations, this project provides training and leadership development to youth and young adults while also building the capacity of staff members who can continue to train and mentor them.

This project builds on existing practices led by NNCC and local schools by adding community-building to their current work. Circle Up emphasizes early, proactive prevention that engages youth and young adults in building a stronger community. Many violence prevention programs focus on identifying and reaching out to specific individuals who may be in need of supportive interventions. That is critically important work, but Circle Up focuses first on strengthening community and peer support in order to prevent many serious problems from emerging. The project seeks to build social cohesion and skills for listening across differences, helping youth develop foundational skills for managing conflict that help prevent violence and lead to more fulfilling lives.

In the Springfield community, we hope this collaboration will support the process of integrating community-building circles into existing programs to support youth and emerging adults. Within schools, we expect this training to help the student leadership programs that Karuna began through BRAVE Schools, which taught groups of 25-30 students at each of 5 schools how to facilitate circles, to become sustainable.

This project is part of an emerging strategy that seeks to integrate Karuna’s deep experience in dialogue and community peacebuilding with locally-led, U.S.-based efforts for civic engagement. Youth and young adults today are coming to age in an uncertain time when participation in community life and access to civic spaces have been seriously disrupted. A lack of social connectedness and belonging is a primary risk factor and common denominator in the pathways of young people who harm themselves or commit harm against others. Our premise is that this key risk factor for violence is preventable: that resilience can be strengthened and  supportive, pluralistic public spaces rebuilt. The leadership and engagement of youth and young adults is vital to such violence prevention and community-building efforts.

Circle Up! is partially funded through the generous support of the Bud Ackerman Fund and the Amelia Peabody Foundation.