About Us
THE SWORDS TO PLOWSHARES PROGRAM BEGAN IN JANUARY 2017.
Our program is focused on reducing gun violence in the communities in which our events take place. With 40,000 gun deaths per year in our country, something must be done now. The strategy we apply to this problem is to convert weapons of death into tools of life, and then use those tools to the betterment of the community, all with the goal of reducing senseless gun deaths.
Our Mission
To build coalitions of community groups, religious organizations, police departments, hospitals, and businesses. Working together, we will build sustainable efforts across the country to help reduce gun violence. Our vision is to be the go-to civilian source for managing gun buybacks and repurposing firearms.
Our Process
***click on the image below to see the transformation of a gun into a gardening tool***
We have developed a program that simultaneously reduces the number of guns on our streets and repurposes them into something which enables positive community action.
The program has a front end, during which we partner with police departments, who subsequently provide us with firearms that are turned in during their gun buyback events.
Before we receive the weapons for destruction, they are vetted by the participating police departments. Weapon parts are then repurposed into various gardening tools, either by prisoners in participating prisons, crew members from re-entry programs, or volunteer blacksmiths. The finished tools are donated to community gardens or agricultural high schools, or used as donation incentives. At harvest time, these gardens provide vegetables that will be donated to soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
These gardening tools provide incentives for turning vacant land into gardens, or for expanding and enriching existing gardens in designated neighborhoods. They provide the residents of those neighborhoods with positive reinforcement and a heightened sense of community pride.
Our process allows us to use creativity to make something inspiring and symbolic out of a weapon of death; something that will symbolize the transformation we believe is possible if Americans step back from the heated gun debate and try to listen to each other.