Worcester is one of the safest cities in the northeast. But as a community, we have decided that we could do even better.

So on June 15, 2015, a diverse array of community leaders, organizations and activists, launched the Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. This wide-ranging plan was the result of a comprehensive needs and resources analysis and was developed with input from hundreds of Worcester residents of all ages.

Since the launch, you probably haven’t heard too much about it. And in the world of youth and gang violence, that’s a good thing. The relative silence is a sign that the work is succeeding at addressing youth and gang violence in the city.

Compared to the year prior to launching the initiative, the city has experienced reductions in violence. From 2014 to 2016, the last full year without the program and the first full year with it, the Worcester Police Department reports:

• 3.2 percent decrease in aggravated assaults

• 13.17 percent reduction in stabbings and slashings

• 31.5 percent reduction in shooting incidents

• 36 percent reduction in shooting victims

The Worcester Public Schools have also reported declines in violent incidents in the schools. The schools saw drastic reductions in violent incidents during the 2015-2016 school year, according to the district’s office of safety. Weapons possession was down nearly 30 percent, and assaults on teachers were down more than 20 percent.

These numbers translate into real lives being saved and reductions in pain and suffering by Worcester’s most vulnerable residents.

One of the most successful efforts of the initiative has been the hiring of full-time outreach workers. These trained professionals are also members of our community, who know our neighborhoods and our kids, and are working every day with proven-risk and gang-involved young people to keep them out of the criminal justice system and to keep our neighborhoods safe.

The Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative has an ambitious mission:

To reduce youth violence in the city of Worcester by eliminating structural racism and promoting trust, safety, healing, and opportunities for Worcester’s most under-resourced youth and families. This will be achieved through policy and system change that ensures equitable distribution of resources and opportunities, collaboration that breaks institutional and organizational silos, and transparency of process and outcomes through consistent information sharing.

Coordinating efforts and creating systems change are critical elements of reducing youth violence. When violence prevention initiatives fail, it is most often not because of the specific interventions and programs being implemented, but because of lack of organizational change. To this end, researchers at Suffolk University are providing Worcester’s initiative with technical assistance to ensure that policy change, coalition building, cross-sector training, and communication and information-sharing are at the heart of the plan. The most important aspect of this effort has been the collaboration of youth-serving agencies across our city, who are sharing information, resources and even staffing in a combined effort to improve the lives of our young people.

None of these efforts work without buy-in from leaders across our community. High level city leadership and widespread community participation is necessary to realize this mission. In this effort, we are joined by Superintendent of Schools Maureen Binienda, Chief of Police Steven Sargent, District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr., Commissioner of Health and Human Services Matilde Castile, the Worcester Housing Authority, the First Justice of Juvenile Court, the chief probation officer, the director of UMass Medical’s Child Trauma Training Center, the central region director of the Department of Youth Services, and the state coordinator of the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative. There are seven working groups, with more than 150 people from more than 70 organizations working together to better the lives of our children.

Having a comprehensive plan has brought additional resources into the city. The Office of Attorney General Maura Healey invested $25,000 in our citywide street outreach worker program. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention awarded the city roughly $350,000 over two years to develop critically needed intervention resources that connect youth, families, schools and social service agencies on the city’s east side. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, through the Charles E. Shannon Community Safety Initiative and the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative, has granted close to $1 million each year for the past several years to fund recreation, education and employment opportunities and behavioral health services for young people struggling with gangs and violence.

Local funders are also investing in the plan. Greater Worcester Community Foundation and the United Way of Central Massachusetts combined to give more than $10,000 to fund the development of an early childhood trauma intervention program for young children who witness violence. Through private donors, the City of Worcester has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to reduce barriers for youth to access free academic, athletic and arts programming in the city’s schools and parks as part of our Recreation Worcester program.

The initiative also provides a platform to coordinate with initiatives that have similar aims. One example is the $1 million Byrne Criminal Justice Initiative in Main South. The entire Youth Violence Prevention Initiative is part of the Worcester Division of Public Health’s Community Health Improvement Plan, ensuring that the youth violence work aligns with other efforts in the city to improve residents’ health and well-being. The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative and Worcester Youth Jobs Coalition have adopted the initiative into their work. In this way the plan is reducing duplication of efforts, and breaking down barriers to real change.

As leaders, we know that safe is never safe enough. And we know that all our children, no matter who their parents are or which zip code they’re born into, deserve a fair chance to live full, happy and healthy lives. As a community, we are working to ensure that dream is our reality.

- Worcester Mayor Joseph M. Petty and City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr. are the co-conveners of the Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative.