Less than an hour before a city-sponsored walk through Dorchester intended to connect with residents in violence-stricken areas, community activists from Roxbury and Dorchester met in Grove Hall to discuss what they see as an ineffective approach to stemming the violence that petrifies the neighborhood.

With family, neighbors, and local leaders at their backs, Monica Cannon of Roxbury and Kilra Hylton of Dorchester asked for a more concerted effort. They called on officials to address the sweep of violence through the neighborhoods, which was particularly apparent after a night of multiple shootings in Mattapan and Roxbury left three young men dead and another three injured.

“It’s going to take more than just the walk,” Cannon said.

She described the difficulty of being a mother to teenage boys, 16 and 17 years old, in an area that sees many dozens of gun-related violent crimes. “I’ve had to have the conversation with my son about his own death,” she said. Her son has had 12 attempts made on his life, she said, one foiled only because the gun pressed to his temple jammed.

Briefly overcome by emotion, Cannon said that son asked her, “Can you keep my casket open so that my friends can see me?”

Monday marked the first in a series of walks through violence-prone neighborhoods encouraged by the Mayor’s Office of Public Safety. According a statement from the Mayor’s office, the walks were started after a recent meeting with community leaders, clergy, and advocates.

Those at the press conference in effect echoed Mayor Martin Walsh’s statement: “We know there is more work to be done to end violence in our neighborhoods. Now is the time that we must come together as one community to find the solutions that create neighborhoods that are safe for children and our families.”

However, speakers took issue with the timeliness and scope of what they understand to be the current plan.

The walks are an “immediate and tangible step,” Walsh’s office said in the statement. Cannon and Hylton said they had participated in similar anti-violence walks in the past and had found them to be distant from the communities through which they traveled.

Communities struggling with violence need increased outreach toward education, job placement, and trauma support, Cannon said.

“If I’m asking a young man to put down his gun, I need to be able to give him something in return,” she said. “What can I offer him?”

One of Hylton’s sons, Raheem Ramirez, was killed in a shooting in early July. The 22-year-old had been released from prison on firearms charges in January and had been in a city-job training program before he was fatally shot on Greenville Street in Roxbury.

“It should be more moms here,” Hylton said. “It’s my generation who are losing their children or [their children] are killing other children.”

She told the Reporter that many community members do not feel directly connected to the people in charge of bettering their neighborhoods and protecting their families.

Terrance Williams, running for the city council seat in District 4, was at the press conference Monday.

This is why he is campaigning, he said. It is a matter of being in the community and doing the work, “being out here for those children, for the youths dying out there in our streets.”

Hylton and Cannon see the walks and current outreach efforts as good first step, but they say they need more, and sooner. They said their families and neighborhoods have already seen enough violence.

“I did the walk on Mother’s Day,” Hylton said. “At that point, I was just supporting mothers who had lost sons. Next year I’m going to be walking for myself.”

Additional walks are scheduled for each day this week: Thursday beginning at the District B-3 Police Station at 6 p.m., 1165 Blue Hill Ave., Mattapan; Friday beginning at Norfolk Park in Mattapan at 6 p.m.; and Saturday beginning at the Boys and Girls Club, 15 Talbot St., Dorchester, time to be determined.