COLUMBUS (WCMH) – Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther outlined new community safety initiatives last week aimed at reducing violence and restoring community and police relationships. Now it’s up to the community to buy into it.

Building relationships to improve the community is something New Salem Baptist Church has been doing for decades in North Linden.

Every Monday morning, church members restock the church’s food pantry for nearly 300 families who they feed each and every week.

Adam Troy of New Salem Baptist Church says the food pantry and its weekly community dinners are just the start of building relationships and connecting with the community in order to get to the root of the violence and socio-economic problems in North Linden.

“It’s an opportunity for us over the course of a meal to get down and to see how the kids are doing, to look them eye-to-eye,” said Troy.

Mayor Ginther unveiled a series of new public safety initiatives last week that offer social services and violence intervention in the city’s most at-risk neighborhoods.

Many grassroots organizations and churches, like New Salem, have already been active in the community with similar programs for years. The next step is figuring out how the city can work with these already existing initiatives.

“Don’t just come out when it is episodic,” Troy said.

The church has introduced a new initiative called the Golden Triangle. They’ve adopted the five blocks between Cleveland Avenue, Oakland Park Avenue and Westerville Road, as well as the 197 households surrounding the church.

“Our goal is to make sure that nobody has to leave the Golden Triangle to maximize their human potential,” Troy said.

As of today, there have been 118 homicides in the City of Columbus in 2017. Many community organizations say only time will tell if communities will support Mayor Ginther’s new initiatives and the proof will be in the homicide and violent crime rates next year.