The City of Louisville has partnered with Goodwill Industries for an initiative that meets gun violence head on.

The organization operates community violence intervention sites in four of the most at risk neighborhoods in the city.

Following training, operatives with Pivot to Peace make connections through their neighborhoods to de-escalate potentially violent situations before tragedy occurs.

The goal of pivot to peace is to reduce gun violence and to build a stronger and healthier community.

Goodwill Initiative Kentucky has been doing this work for a while and bringing community violence intervention into it and putting it in a framework is a little different from us, but we've been working with high risk people.

We've had a lot of people who go through our programs and services that we have reached out and supported to have a better life.

Two things about a public health approach.

Violence can be prevented by early intervention or direct intervention, and then it can be prevented by reducing the level of transmission.

So by focusing on the highest risk individuals that are involved in violence, we're preventing the transmission of violence from one group to another or an individual to another.

Young men and women that's in this environment don't ask for help.

They try to figure it out on a day to day basis.

Living for survival.

Every day when we start our day, we look at what the shooting responses in our community may have been.

We are able to assess what our team needs to do when they're out in the field, and we strategize about what we want to do, what the community should see from us, Balance intervention specialists are people who are credible.

Their credibility could be their shared experience with their community.

The credibility could be their personal journey, their backgrounds that allows them to connect quickly and and maintain established relationships with our community.

We deal with kids that always fit some type of description, so talking to them and understanding them, trying to give them because, you know, a lot of these kids will come from the type of community we come from.

They don't have hope.

So the only thing we try to do is give them hope.

I was once considered, in a vulnerable situation or a vulnerable, individual.

Some clients at the beginning a little wary of what we got going on.

But once you tell them about our program and you tell them, all the resources that we have and all the community partners that we're connected to, they're very excited and want to be a part of what we have going on.

That goes back to just being credible, being from these neighborhoods as well.

After a while, people, refer people to you as well.

And, just being visible so people can know that when they need you, they can know they can find you as well.

We have mediated 31 conflicts in the community that could have resulted in shootings or fatalities.

And we've been able to support our community by showing up to 100% of the shooting responses that happened in our designated area.

It can be a dangerous job, and you're actually going up to people that are in conflicts with others where there's shootings going on back and forth.

So you're engaging people often that maybe you're in possession of firearms.

Maybe there's a high risk that at any moment that other groups are looking for them and they could be shot at.

So there are danger issues that come in to you.

And challenges of doing these positions.

It also takes a toll on the workers themselves.

Often, community violence intervention workers, suffer secondary trauma.

And a lot of our life is I mean, I'm not trying to, downgrade the significance of it, but it's is the life that we live.

So, you know, I'm saying I'm a it's like because it goes on so much.

So we used to the environment in order for us to do the job that we got to do, we got to meet them.

Where they at.

But you know, when it takes a life to save a life, you know, pivot to Peace has had boots on the ground in Louisville since last November.