Promise Neighborhoods Lehigh Valley, one of the region’s most prominent nonprofits dedicated to preventing gun violence, has new leadership for the first time since 2017.
Jeani Garcia, the organization’s director of operations, has succeeded Hasshan Batts as executive director, effective April 1. The changeover occurs as the organization navigates federal funding cuts, a challenge Garcia says she is up to meeting.
Batts, who has led the organization since 2017, will step down after eight years at the helm. He grew Promise Neighborhoods from a small organization with just three staff to a major regional nonprofit with around 40 staff and a multimillion-dollar budget that goes toward anti-gun violence initiatives. Batts said he never planned to lead the organization indefinitely, and he has worked for around two years on plans for Garcia to succeed him.
“Our succession plan was for Jeani to be my successor, and to step into that place,” Batts said. “She’s from Allentown, we focus on having local leadership, we believe that the nonprofit sector in general, especially the Lehigh Valley, should be building a pipeline of local leaders, and people should not clog it.”
Batts will take on an advisory role at Promise Neighborhoods until the end of the year, and following that, plans to focus his efforts on his Watson-Batts School of Construction initiative, which trains people from disadvantaged communities for jobs in the construction industry.
Garcia’s title is currently “interim director,” but Batts said the interim status is a “formality” and that he believes Garcia has the support of the board of directors which will officially appoint her executive director by next year.
Promise Neighborhoods was established in 2007 and was what Batts called a “backbone” organization — analyzing data and offering proposed solutions, but stopping short of offering direct help and programs. After Batts came on in 2017, he oversaw its expansion into one of the region’s most prominent nonprofits, which has secured several million-dollar grants.
Today, Promise Neighborhoods offers a “Zero Youth Violence” program which sends its outreach workers to mediate conflicts and meet with at-risk youth, as well as leadership training and workforce development programs.
“We created a presence and we institutionalized an organization that was really based in grassroots community, being the voice and leaders in the community, that’s what we’ve built over the last few years,” Batts said. “We’re talking about lived experience … violence prevention, survivors of gun violence, lost children to gun violence, re-entry, prison survivors, people that have harmed the community that have intentionally come back, that is the model that we use.”
He lists among his accomplishments as Promise Neighborhoods’ leader a citywide reduction in violent crime — though he said Promise Neighborhood can not take sole credit for that reduction — and he also noted that no youth in Allentown have lost their lives to gun violence in the past two years.
Promise Neighborhoods volunteers have been in the community following recent violence, including a shooting earlier this month near Allen High School that left a woman injured.
Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk said Promise Neighborhoods is an important partner to the city’s efforts to combat violence in its neighborhoods. At a news conference in January where Tuerk announced a 35-year low in homicide rates in 2024, Batts and Garcia stood with him, and Tuerk credited Promise Neighborhoods as well as other nonprofits for their efforts to combat violence.
“There’s things a nonprofit like Promise Neighborhoods can do that a city government cannot do, so I’m grateful for the work the organization has done over the years to help create that safe environment in Allentown,” Tuerk said.
Promise Neighborhoods’ philosophy is that violence is a contagious community disease, and by addressing violence at its root cause, like poverty and a lack of resources, can “cure” that contagion. Gun violence is an issue that Garcia knows all too well — in an opinion piece for the Morning Call, she described how her son, who she later lost to a gang-related shooting in 2012, would hide overdue bills from her, and promised her that he would find the money to pay for it “by any means necessary.”
“You see another example on how the disparities in my community — the lack of basic human rights — were the leading cause to a potential act of violence,” Garcia wrote.
“Jeani is a model for taking incredibly strong emotion and translating it into action that benefits other people,” Tuerk said. “Jeani went through that tragedy and used that energy to have a positive impact on other peoples’ lives.”
Garcia said some of her priorities as the organization’s new leader include growing community involvement and widening the organization’s donor base.
That will be key to the organization’s future. In April, Garcia announced that its “Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative” funding from the Department of Justice had been canceled, and asked for the local community to step up and help fill in those funding gaps.
“Our work doesn’t stop here,” Garcia said via a statement in the news release. “Now, more than ever, we need the community’s support to ensure that the services and safety nets we’ve built remain strong.”
Promise Neighborhoods has a distinct and visible presence in Allentown — its employees and volunteers wear conspicuous orange shirts with “End Gun Violence” in bold letters, and the organization also has branded cars and a truck that can be seen throughout the city.
But, Garcia acknowledged, she hears sometimes from Allentonians that “people do not know” about the work Promise Neighborhoods is doing. That is why the nonprofit held an open house recently, with free food and tables with information about Promise Neighborhoods’ various programs. Garcia also plans to establish a community advisory board to gather more feedback from residents, with the goal of giving Allentown residents “a seat at the table.”
“I would like to have the community more involved,” Garcia said.