In 2007 Essex County Community Organization, which has a primary focus in Lynn Massachusetts, began a listening campaign with several of the churches in the region. ECCO leaders discovered the people of faith in Lynn were deeply concerned about their youth.  Their concerns on whether the Lynn youth were being harassed and pressured to participate in gang activity or victims of violence topped the list.

ECCO leaders worked with state-wide Coalition of PICO members to help create several funding programs that would begin to shift the paradigm of state funding for violence issues away from building prisons toward funding violence prevention programs, like Street outreach worker programs, after school drop-in centers with mentoring components, and summertime and after-school job programs.

After these funding programs were created, ECCO local leaders critically analyzed funding levels and compared them youth crime-rates in other cities. Research revealed our community was being funded at less than 20% the per-capita rate than other cities with equal youth crime rates. ECCO began to host several actions with elected officials to shift this trend. ECCO efforts resulted in an increase in these funding levels to nearly 1/2 million dollars for Lynn teens, and several new programs including a "Street Outreach Worker" program and several new Drop-In centers.

Recently a Lynn research agency called the "Children's Law Center" released a study conducted by the CLC, to find the arraignment levels of juveniles into Lynn courts had DECREASED BY AN UNBELIEVABLE 23% since these programs had been implemented in our communities.  Lynn PICO leaders take time to celebrate for now, but understand that more work needs to be done.