Details set on making streets safer

80% of funds raised for first-year costs

Working with 25 new street workers, core social-service agencies in some of the city's toughest neighborhoods will stay open late nights and weekends, offering job training and preparedness programs and family support outreach, according to plans for a $26 million initiative officially unveiled yesterday by the Boston Foundation and city and community leaders.

The initiative, known as StreetSafe Boston, would also teach the street workers the skills of mentoring and mediation, in an ambitious effort to reach the 16- to 24-year-olds in five neighborhoods along or near Blue Hill Avenue who commit most of the city's violent crimes.

"One of the main thrusts of the work here is to build a culture of peace," said Barbara Ferrer, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission and one of the architects of the initiative.

Backers have raised 80 percent of the first year's operating costs, have received commitments so far of nearly $8 million from fund-raising and private and public donations, and are targeting other donors nationwide.

StreetSafe Boston will spend some $1 million each year on street workers; $1.5 million on job training, including stipends for youths who demonstrate achievement; approximately $1.5 million for social service programs, and about $250,000 on training for youth workers.

The initiative is considered the next phase of a campaign begun by religious and city leaders in the early 1990s that came to be known as "the Boston Miracle," which helped curb an epidemic of violence in minority neighborhoods.

This time the civic and city groups are collaborating from the onset, targeting the estimated 2,000 youths who they believe commit much of the crime in the five neighborhoods: the Dudley Square and Grove Hall areas in Roxbury; the South End and Lower Roxbury; the Bowdoin Street and Geneva Avenue area in Dorchester; and Morton and Norfolk Street in Mattapan.

StreetSafe Boston's goal is to reduce homicides and violent crimes by 10 percent over the next six years, while reaching out to families to help end violence.

"We want to work on preventive work, because 10 years from now we don't want to be having the same press conference," said the Rev. Ray Hammond, chairman of the Boston Foundation and cofounder of the TenPoint Coalition, a group of ministers that was largely responsible for the Boston Miracle.

Sherelle Lee, 26, a mother of two, spoke about the deaths of two close friends, the fathers of her two daughters who were killed within the last six years. In each case, she said, the men seemed to know that they would succumb to the violence around them, as if they had no expectations or hope for themselves.

"We need an older generation of men, to teach our younger men," she said.

Milton Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com.