The Community Healing Project: Evaluating a Peer-Led Model for Youth Healing and Violence Prevention

Communities across Toronto face the enduring impacts of community violence, particularly on young people who experience trauma, loss, and limited access to culturally responsive mental health supports. The Community Healing Project (CHP) was developed to address these challenges through an innovative, peer-led approach that centred lived experience, community connection, and healing as pathways to violence prevention.

CHP was delivered by the City of Toronto and Stella’s Place in partnership with Agincourt Community Services Association, Jane Finch Community & Family Centre, The Neighbourhood Group (formerly St. Stephen’s Community House), and Yorktown Family Services, with funding from Public Safety Canada’s National Crime Prevention Strategy. CHP trained young people with lived experience of community violence to become Peer Healers. Through paid training, wraparound supports, and a structured laddering model, Peer Healers developed mental health literacy and facilitation skills, and delivered workshops to other youth in their own communities. Alumni were able to progress into paid roles, including Peer Mentor and Quadrant Coordinator positions, creating pathways into employment and leadership alongside personal healing.

As evidence partner, Blueprint was engaged to lead a five-year, mixed-methods evaluation of CHP, working collaboratively with program partners to generate actionable evidence that could inform implementation, adaptation, and sustainability. The evaluation combined longitudinal surveys, interviews and focus groups, participatory data collection led by Peer Healers, and ongoing feedback loops with program staff and funders. This approach ensured that evidence generation was grounded in the realities of youth, communities, and frontline delivery.

Across multiple cohorts and years, Blueprint’s evaluation found that CHP successfully reached youth in neighbourhoods experiencing high levels of violence and trauma, while producing meaningful outcomes for both Peer Healers and workshop participants. Evidence showed gains in mental health literacy, coping skills, confidence, and help-seeking behaviours among youth participants, alongside professional skill development, employment outcomes, and continued community engagement among Peer Healers. Importantly, findings also highlighted the conditions required for peer-based models to succeed, including the necessity of wraparound supports, case management, staff sustainability, and realistic expectations about how healing unfolds over time.

Beyond assessing outcomes, Blueprint supported continuous improvement, with findings directly informing program design changes such as enhanced case management, expanded supports, and refinements to training and delivery. For policymakers and funders, CHP offers a longitudinal case study of how community driven, trauma-informed interventions can contribute to violence prevention, youth wellbeing, and workforce pathways, while underscoring the investments needed to sustain this work at scale.

Explore the reports

• Download the Final Report (2023)
• Download Year Three in Review (2022)
• Download Year Two in Review (2021)
• Download Year One in Review (2020)