Working in Your Neighborhood
Save Our Community is a community violence intervention and prevention program to reduce gun violence. Credible messengers — people from our neighborhoods, many with lived experience of violence — interrupt conflict before it becomes a shooting.
We have 8 CVI frontline staff that work alongside survivors, young leaders, faith leaders, grassroots organizations, and re-entry services.
The Numbers
SOC was created in 2021, the same year Toledo lost 71 lives to homicide. In 2025, that number was down nearly 50% citywide. In Junction and Englewood (our first target neighborhoods) zero homicides last year. Our vision is a city with zero homicides every year.
What We Do
Detect and interrupt conflicts
Trained interrupters and outreach specialists identify and mediate potentially lethal conflicts in the community. They also follow up to ensure that the conflict does not reignite.
- Prevent retaliations
- Mediate ongoing conflicts
- Conflict follow-up
Identify and treat high risk individuals
Trained outreach specialists work with youth and young adults (14-24 years old) at the highest risk. By meeting them where they are and helping them to obtain resources, they help to prevent future violence.
- Assess the highest risk
- Change behaviors through Rewire CBT protocol
- Connect to jobs, mentorship, and support
Support healing after violence
Team members engage community leaders, residents, local business owners, faith leaders, service providers, and high-risk individuals, to help build positive, safe, resilient communities.
- Respond to homicides to support victims
- Organize community outreach
- Support positive opportunities for youth engagement
Interrupting Cycles of Violence
Rewire CBT is a non-clinical approach to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the gold standard behavioral health intervention for addressing trauma and reducing violence. SOC staff are trained to teach skills that help young people learn to think, feel, and do differently.
Latest MONSE News
View All NewsFriday, January 05
Save Our Community School-based Team Gets Certified in Stop the Bleed Training
Read the articleWednesday, May 31
The Biggest Story of 2023: Crime is Down
Read the articleTuesday, May 23
Mayor Kapszukiewicz Launches Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement to Foster Community Partnership in Public Safety Efforts
Read the articleTackling Issues Surrounding Violence
Interrupters not only work with individuals in the community, but they also report issues in neighborhoods like blight, vacant properties, and broken sidewalks. Investing in neighborhoods is a crime prevention strategy.