Champions for Peace: A Conversation with Ingram Bell of the Margaret Clinard Outreach Foundation

Community violence intervention relies on concerned individuals willing to serve as peacemakers within their communities. They work tirelessly to prevent violence by engaging those at highest risk of using or being injured by a gun to alter the trajectory of their lives and curb the spread of violence. In this series, we hope to highlight the invaluable contributions of CVI workers and foster a deeper understanding of CVI from the perspective of the frontlines.  

We are thrilled to share that this quarter’s Champion for Peace is Ingram Bell of the Margaret Clinard Outreach Foundation (MCOF). Ingram has tirelessly served her community in Greensboro, North Carolina, for most of her life, co-founding MCOF in 2014 in honor of her late mother. Ingram and her team provide essential violence interruption, mentorship, and art therapy services to the Triad area, which consists of the Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point communities. 

This interview is edited for length and clarity. 

Co-founder of the Margaret Clinard Outreach Foundation | Greensboro, North Carolina

It became part of my mission, my vision, and understanding that if God saved me, there’s somebody else that I can save.

On January 1, 2023, my co-founder for MCOF was murdered. She was the first homicide of the year. She lost her life to the fight we were fighting, so that keeps me pushing. It’s the continued violence and the belief in a beloved community rooted in justice, empathy, and healing that keep me motivated, as well as the small victories.

What do you wish more people understood about addressing violence?

I wish more people understood that addressing violence means addressing everything connected to it. That means the trauma, the poverty, housing, education, opportunity, and identity. Violence doesn’t grow from nowhere. It grows from where hope has been starved. 

People tend to only focus on the victim, the victim’s family, or the one who did the shooting, but we’re missing some of the pieces. If there’s a body outside in a community, the entire community has seen and heard it. It’s traumatic for everyone. 

That’s why, for me, CVI isn’t just about stopping shootings. It’s about restoring a balance in our community. We’re not just focused on one piece, we’re focused on everybody. 

I also wish people understood that this is a real profession, and that they saw us as professionals and not just community members doing something. This is our life’s work. It’s hard work, and it’s rooted in skills and training. We’re not just out here willy-nilly. We are professionals, and this is a professional field.

Too often, the community is treated like a side note in CVI, but the ‘C’ is the foundation. Without us in the rooms, plans, and policies, it’s just talk about us. It’s never anything transformational if we’re not at the table.

What is the hardest part of your job?

The most difficult part is always the loss. When someone you’ve prayed for, mentored, walk with, decides to recidivate or winds up dead, that’s always the hardest part. Hearing family members cry or hearing a mother moan—if you’ve never heard the moan of a mother from losing her child, you’ll never understand.

That’s the hardest part for me, it’s the feeling that you failed. Even thinking about my situation, waking up and looking at my mama moaning and crying because she didn’t understand, and she didn’t know if I would make it. I don’t want anyone ever to have to feel that pain again.

What insights or advice do you have for other women in this work?

What do you think your biggest hope is for the future of this work?

I want us to be seen as experts, and not just some charity organization. I want us to be respected as a professional discipline.

I want our education in this field to continue to grow, and to see more programs like the CVI Leadership Academy. I was part of Cohort 3, and it was amazing. 

There were 31 of us from 30 different places across the country, and we made one of the tightest, dopest bonds. The brotherhood and sisterhood that we share—we talk to each other every day, communicate all the time. If one of us is throwing a big event in our community, we come, we show up, and we support each other. Being part of that has been wonderful.

I hope for a future where healing isn’t a privilege, it’s a right—where our young people see possibility instead of pain, where peace isn’t something that we pray for every day, it’s something we live in daily. That’s my hope for CVI.

Thank you, Ingram Bell, and the team at the Margaret Clinard Outreach Foundation. We look forward to bringing you more conversations with other dedicated peacemakers.