Memphis Allies

One life lost to gun violence is one too many.

Memphis Allies is Memphis' gun violence intervention initiative, launched by Youth Villages — a growing collaboration of community partners, clinical and outreach teams and national experts working together to stop the next shooting. Its programs are powered by relationships: every participant gets an outreach specialist, a life coach, a case manager and a clinical specialist, an entire team devoted to helping one person make different choices. It focuses on the highest-risk individuals because that is what brings shootings down fastest, and it is working — 91% of participants have not incurred another gun charge while in programming.

What Memphis Allies Does

SWITCH — Adults

For adults at the highest risk of gun violence, as victim or perpetrator. Participants often come after surviving a shooting, leaving incarceration, or trying to walk away from a violent life. Engagement runs 12 to 18 months: a life plan, real goals, individual and group therapy, and the skills to handle conflict without retaliation.

SWITCH Youth

Citywide support for teens with serious legal involvement, repeated arrests or gang ties — 12 to 18 months and longer if needed, working with the whole family. Memphis Allies coordinates with courts, probation officers and schools so a young person and their people have one path forward instead of five.

The Team Around One Person

Outreach specialists who build trust through credibility and consistency. Clinical specialists who help participants heal from trauma. Life coaches who model change from lived experience. Case managers who walk people through housing, employment, education and life goals.

Support With Intention to Create Hope

That is what SWITCH stands for. Memphis murders fell from 344 in 2023 to 184 in 2025 — a 46% drop and the lowest count since 2016, per the City of Memphis Safer Communities Dashboard. The work is not finished; the streets don't close, so they don't close.

A Job Is Part of the Plan

Memphis Allies case managers sit down with participants on housing, education and employment — and both SWITCH and SWITCH Youth include employment training. That is exactly where organized labor comes in. A man coming home from incarceration, or a young person walking away from the block, needs more than good intentions: he needs a trade, a card, a check and a pension. Our free District 10 Trades Pathways class, Memphis Virtual Adult High School, and the second-chance hiring employers in this app are built for the person Memphis Allies just pulled back from the edge.

Need Help, or Know Somebody Who Does?

If you or someone you love is caught up in gun violence — on either end of it — you can call Memphis Allies directly, or submit a referral on their site. You do not have to be the one in trouble to make the call. Ages 12 to 35.

A Community Partner of Labor Education

Nobody stops gun violence alone, and no union family is untouched by it. Memphis Allies brings the outreach, the clinical care and the credibility; labor brings the apprenticeships, the journeyman wages and the hall that stays open after the program ends. If you run a local, adopt this as your public safety partner: refer the young people you know, send volunteers, and open an apprenticeship door for a SWITCH participant who has done the work.

Connect with Memphis Allies

Want to get involved, partner, or learn more? Reach out through their website.