Legacy & Beyond: Alive Community Outreach
What do you want your legacy to be?
As part of our 2025 Annual Report, we challenged four nonprofit leaders to answer the question in a statement that describes the impact they hope their organizations will have on the community through their leadership.
ORGANIZATION
Alive Community Outreach
Alive Community Outreach cultivates a community free from the cycle of violence through violence prevention for youth and youth-serving organizations, restorative intervention for youth who are acting out violently, and survivor support for families affected by homicide.
Angelo Mante, Executive Director
Angelo Mante co-founded Alive Community Outreach with his wife, Marie, in 2020, although his work in violence prevention began years earlier. Angelo is an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church and has previously held nonprofit leadership roles supporting youth in foster care and families experiencing homelessness, with his calling as clergy guiding his commitment to social justice.
Alive Community Outreach’s Legacy
Angelo Mante, Executive Director
Alive Community Outreach was officially founded in 2020, but our commitment to nonviolence began years prior, ignited by the tragic murder of my cousin in 2016. This deeply personal experience called my family from Georgia back home to Fort Wayne to address violence on a broader level. I spent three years learning about the problem of violence in Fort Wayne, forming a team, and developing a strategy for how we might respond.
Our mission extends beyond simply ending conflicts; we empower youth to build peace and champion change, fostering a community where every individual is valued and supported. Looking ahead, I envision Alive as a trusted regional—and even national—resource for building peace, expanding our school-based models and Kingian Nonviolence trainings, while always remaining deeply rooted in Fort Wayne.
I’ll drive down the street and see a teenager I’ve never met wearing a “Be the Peace” shirt or hear about students breaking up fights because they don’t want to ruin their school’s “Peace Count.” Our students are planning events on their own, and survivors are transforming their pain into purpose by volunteering in schools. My cousin’s story may have sparked this work, but it has grown into a movement of hope and transformation in our community.
My hope is that the legacy our passionate team at Alive has built will be captured by three words: integrity, collaboration, and peace—signifying not just the absence of conflict, but the vibrant presence of justice, healing, and beloved community.