PROVIDENCE — A new crew of street workers will soon be popping up across the city, hoping to quell violence in some of its toughest neighborhoods.

Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence, said Wednesday that his nonprofit organization hopes to have five additional workers on board within the next two weeks. So far, the institute has interviewed about 25 candidates, many of whom are former gang members with extensive criminal records.

“My team, at the moment, needs fresh legs,” Gross said.

The money for the new hires is coming from President Obama’s $787-million economic stimulus package that is designed to help struggling state and municipal governments. Gross said that the city is providing the institute $100,000 to help finance the cost.

The street workers are paid $27,000 a year and the institute pays for 85 percent of their health insurance. They also are provided with BlackBerry cell phones and up to $40 a week in gas allowance. The five newcomers will bring the total number of street workers to 13.

Gross said that he is still looking for Laotian and Cambodian candidates to fill some of the openings. The goal of the institute is to hire street workers from a variety of ethnic backgrounds — Asian, African-American, Latino and Liberian — to work with troubled youth. A large percentage of the city’s 1,400 gang members are Cambodian, Laotian and Latino and teenagers from those cultures respond to someone with the same background, Gross said.

The institute also plans to assign one of the new workers to Central Falls, and has discussed placing street workers in Pawtucket and Cranston, both of which abut Providence and have had an uptick in gang and youth violence.

The institute suffered a major setback six weeks ago when David Cartagena, a popular street worker and former member of the Almighty Latin King Nation, was killed in a car accident on Route 95.

Cartagena was recognized as a talented speaker who had turned his life around and become an advocate of peace among rival gangs.

Gross said that at least 10 of the applicants for the new street worker positions said they were inspired by Cartagena’s legacy.

“One like him comes once in a generation,” Ajay Benton, a program manager at the institute likes to say.

Over the past year, the institute has lost several other street workers. Some left for other jobs, while others just didn’t work out. Gross said that many of them get “burnt out” from dealing with a steady stream of murders and shootings. He said they often become depressed from spending endless hours in hospital emergency rooms with victims of violence.

The street workers are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The new hires, once on board, must undergo two days of training before they hit the streets with a veteran street worker. Gross said the newcomers are needed as the city enters the dog days of summer when more young people are on the street and there is an increased likelihood of violence.

bmalinow@projo.com