Homewood South's Bible Center Church hosting events aimed at curbing gun violence

Cynthia Wallace, pastor at Bible Center Church in Pittsburgh’s Homewood South neighborhood, believes violence prevention efforts should start young.

Her church was one of more than 30 Pittsburgh organizations that received nearly $1 million in Stop the Violence grants from the city. The money is meant to fund initiatives that aim to reduce gun violence.

Thanks in part to that grant funding, Wallace has spearheaded an initiative to empower local youth to make their voices heard and help them learn about nonviolent conflict resolution.

Through an afterschool program the church runs, called The Maker’s Clubhouse, Wallace said she’s been working with about 50 fourth- and fifth-grade students from Faison and Lincoln elementary schools on a project called Through My Lens.

Students met one-on-one with volunteer mentors to craft artistic portfolios including photos of things they see in their community — including things they’re concerned about and things that give them hope — and then crafted journals and audio recordings to go with their photos. The work will be displayed at the church from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday.

“The children have taken pictures of things that concern them, their hopes, their fears,” Wallace said, explaining that students were encouraged to use the project as a way to advocate for their community’s needs. “We just want to give them an opportunity through their artwork to share that with the larger Pittsburgh community.”

At the same time, Wallace said, the afterschool program also focused on teaching students about healthy ways to communicate their feelings and how to solve conflicts in positive ways.

“We’re really starting with children in elementary school to teach them how to impact their community positively, so that five years from now, 10 years from now, they know they don’t have to resort to guns,” she said.

Wallace said they also teach the students about who in local government might be able to help them address problems they see in their communities.

She said she felt it was important that the children “know that adults hear them and want things to be different for them.”

Bible Center Church also is one of three churches — along with Homewood AME and Bethesda Presbyterian — hosting a Memorial to the Lost event, which opens at Bible Center Church with a prayer service at noon Saturday.

The event features a display of T-shirts on the lawn, with each shirt bearing the name, age and death date of every person who died as a result of gun violence in Allegheny County in the past year.

“The T-shirts really bring that to life, that these are people’s lives,” Wallace said. “They’re not just names. They’re people that a year ago were here and unfortunately have been taken from us from gun violence.”

The memorial will be on display there for two weeks before moving on to another church.