Nekenya Hardy, associate director of outreach and intervention for the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, walked onto the stage at the Morgan MFG venue last month during Austin Coming Together’s Membership Award event to receive the Illinois Peace Portrait Award for 2025.
A Black man who could have been caught in a life of violence, instead, he is part of the “violence interrupters” who are helping change the lives of young Black men caught up in the perilous grip of street life, through a collaborative community approach.
A victim of gun violence in 2004, Hardy, 45, was approached by his cousin, Karl Bell, and Alphonso Prater, who were with Ceasefire at the time, asking him not to retaliate against the shooter or shooters but to join them at Ceasefire. He did so in 2005.
Prater along with Hardy are part of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago team of violence interrupters working the Austin and West Garfield Park communities.
Promoted five times since starting with the Institute in 2017, Hardy has 1000 conflict mediations in Austin and is marking a total of 20 years violence prevention experience this year.
Growing up in Austin, street life was all he knew
“I grew up on Massasoit [Street] and Augusta [Boulevard],” Hardy said. “My grandfather and my grandmother were there and I’ve been living there all my life. That’s all I knew was the street, right? It was in my household and in my community when I would go outside to play with my friends. It was in school where I went to learn. It’s kind of sad to say, but I really didn’t know that catching a felony and going to jail could tarnish my background until I’d already had a felony.”
There was no Ceasefire or Institute for Nonviolence or any other organization that he knew of during those times that were trying to guide young men to do better, he added.
“My mother, father and cousins all were part of street life,” Hardy said describing that life as selling drugs, joining gangs, partying, surviving.” It was the only way I knew how to survive.”
It’s the same today for young Black male youth.
“We have a bunch of young men out here who want to get out of gangbanging and selling drugs and who want the better things in life and want to get out of that type of environment,” Hardy said. “At the same time, though, they also feel like they need to carry a gun to protect themselves because everybody’s got them.
Hardy’s approach on the street starts with respect. He’s even had to intervene in the lives of his younger cousins who are 31 and 32 years of age.
“I helped them realize they can do without the streets and once I was able to get them out of street life and show them they could live a productive lifestyle, it kind of went from each one teach one,” he explained. “People then start to want to do better. I find out what they want to do and want to be so I can meet them where they are and go from there.”
Samuel Castro, the Institute’s director of strategic initiatives and partnerships, talked to the Austin Weekly News about the training curriculum for the interrupters.
“Because of our lived experience, it gives us a first-hand approach unfortunately, to what trauma looks like,” Castro said. “We create trainings around conflict resolution, de-escalation and nonviolence to give people the basic tools they need to do the job. What keeps us different is the innovation in the work. We routinely check in with the frontline staff to ask about any new trends they’re seeing in the generation and the culture.”
Social media is also utilized for de-escalating situations
The Institute as a whole received the Excellence in Neighborhood Safety and Youth Development due to impactful work in empowering young people and advancing neighborhood safety through its collaborative efforts with other groups in the community.
“We were able to help 97 young men receive their CDL license or some type of trade in HVAC and things like that,” Hardy said. “We saw that it changed lives and it makes the neighborhood safer. The target population we work with are the highest of the highest risk who could be the next perpetrator or the next victim of gun violence.”
A respected leader in gun violence prevention, intervention and reduction with their street outreach, job programs, behavioral health and wellness and collaborations with other organizations, the Institute is guided by the nonviolence principles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Ten year ago in Austin in 2016, there were 459 shootings; statistics in 2025 show, a decrease to 137 shootings, Hardy said.
Hardy credits the decline to the collaborative approach the Institute has with the other organizations such as BUILD, Austin Coming Together and others.
“It’s also with the help of Commander Andre Parham in the 15th [Police] District,” helping us realize those at the highest risk and giving us the chance to work with them before they take them to jail,” Hardy added. “We already know for the most part who they are but being given the chance to work with them before they go to jail is huge.”
