In the storefront window on Van Siclen Avenue, an electronic sign shows a running total of how long it has been since the last shooting took place in an area of roughly 20 square blocks in East New York, Brooklyn.

As of Thursday afternoon, the sign read:

363 Days No Shootings No Killings.

This week one year ago, a neighborhood development organization, Man Up!, began to send people into the streets to figure out where the violence was going next so they could hit the pause button. Mediate. Listen. Talk.

Some workers in the project had been street criminals themselves; others had been victims of violent crime, losing partners and children to it.

“You get tired of going to people’s funeral that you grew up with, or their kids’ funerals, from gun violence in the street,” a member of the group, Athena Collins, 43, said. The father of her five children was murdered.