After a drop in the homicide rate during the late 1990s, Boston experienced a 10-year high in murders last year with 75 killings. This year has been no better. Earlier this summer, the city averaged three shooting victims–both fatal and non-fatal–every two days. One of the deadliest areas is the neighborhood surrounding the Bowdoin Street and Geneva Avenue Intersection in Dorchester, Mass.

Located at 284 Bowdoin Street, St. Peter Catholic School sits in the heart of the violence. “All of our students directly know someone who has been a victim or perpetrator,” said Principal Mary Lou Amrhein.

St. Peter Parish primarily consists of working poor African-Americans, Hispanics and immigrants from the Caribbean Islands and the Cape Verde Islands. “Many of our students live in households with one wage-earner,” said Amrhein, “with the parent working long hours and unable to look after the children once school lets out.”

School administrators long realized the need for some sort of parish after-school program–an assessment shared by a city study, which identified Dorchester as having one of the city’s highest percentages of students not being served by afterschool services. But St. Peter is struggling itself, receiving an annual subsidy of nearly $177,000 from the archdiocese. “The archdiocesan funds keep the lights on and the gas burning,” said St. Peter’s pastor, Fr. Daniel Finn. “There was no money available for an afterschool program.”

In 1997, a coalition of parish and community leaders organized a task force to identify the afterschool needs of Bowdoin students. In a series of house meetings, the students’ parents–many of whom are first-generation immigrants who speak limited English–overwhelmingly expressed a need for a place where their children could get help with their homework,

With the assistance of private donations, charitable foundations and city, state and federal grants, the Bowdoin Street After School Program opened its doors in 2002. Located out of the school basement, the program, which last year served more than 90 students, provides educational assistance and recreational opportunities from 2 to 6 p.m. To create an “all-day long continuum of care for the students,” the afterschool program works in conjunction with a teen center run by Catholic Charities, which operates out of the school basement daily from 4 to 9 p.m.

The programs have garnered praise from Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for being a model provider of successful afterschool service.

The afterschool program was designed to meet parents’ desire for homework assistance. All students receive extensive tutoring. To track educational progress, they are tested three times a year in math, art and language. The students scored 22 percent higher on last year’s exams than they did the year before, said Nicole O’Brien, director of the afterschool program, which costs about $170,000 annually.

O’Brien said that one of the best markers of the program’s success is the number of students who have moved on to high school and college and are now coming back to volunteer or work full-time at the center.

“We’re giving them an alternative to the streets,” said O’Brien.

The center has also become a focal meeting place for community organizations aimed at reducing the violence tearing apart the neighborhood. Romney recently used the center as a backdrop for the signing of a piece of antigun legislation.