Being the child of a homicide victim, F.A.C.E. Supervisor K. Collins knows firsthand the violent experiences that some youth have to suffer through, encouraging her to take on the responsibility of preventing those experiences from reaching others.
“My father was shot and killed in Northwest Indiana when I was 19 years old…prior to having that experience at 19 – my first experience was at 17,” she said. “My cousin, who happened to be 19 at the time, was at a party here in Northwest Indiana and was killed at that party.
“The sad part about it is that I realize now, and that happened to me in my teen years, violence, unfortunately, is so prevalent these days. More young people are having to deal with violence that many of us older people didn’t have to deal with. So, it’s definitely something that needs to be looked at and something that needs to be addressed.”
The S.A.V.E. Promise club is a branch of Project Outreach and Prevention (P.O.P.), designed to educate students about the prevalence of violence around them while encouraging youth to voice their opinions and address the issues within our community. With S.A.V.E.’s connections to higher programs such as P.O.P., it also offers students with an interest in law enforcement or the medical field the chance to obtain scholarships.
It’s a program that exists within multiple states and schools, and it’s completely student-led, giving students the opportunity to work on their leadership skills and gives them more responsibility in protecting our community. The first local meeting will be Oct. 7th.
Collins said there’s no single activity that is planned. Instead, it’s just going to be wherever the need is.
“If a student sees an effort on TV that says there’s going to be a walk, for example, to bring awareness to violence, and say ‘Hey, we want to participate in that walk, and we want to support’, that’s what we’re going to do,” Ms. Collins said. “If there’s some type of initiative that they say, ‘Hey, around the holidays, we want to do a coat drive or something to give coats to young kids whose parents were the victims of violence.’ They don’t have a mom or dad because they were killed, for example.”
S.A.V.E. students also gain access to special P.O.P. programs over the summer, such as a program called “Stop The Bleed”.
“‘Stop The Bleed’ will show you how to apply a tourniquet, show you how to apply pressure, and show you how to render aid to that person who’s hurt until help can actually get there,” Ms. Collins said. “There was a young man that went through the P.O.P. program and learned ‘Stop The Bleed’. Well, they went off to college, and I want to say it was in Atlanta – a young lady was shot at a party. [The boy] was actually able to render aid, and had he not learned what ‘Stop The Bleed’ taught him, that young lady wouldn’t have made it.”
One form of violence within our community is within our own school. School fights create problems for both students and staff, often lacking reason.
“While I believe in self-defense and protecting yourself, most people tend to have no reason to fight, and it’s terrible that because of a few people, the entirety of the student body gets punished,” said Freshman Destiny Young. “I felt annoyed at the fact that some people fight just to fight. Most students are unsympathetic towards fights because it doesn’t involve them. Most people don’t genuinely care unless it’s someone they know or if it was about them. But there are a few that are unsympathetic simply because the students who were fighting made their own bed and now have to lie in it.”
Ms. Collins used to do mentoring at a school here in Northwest Indiana where fights would occur often.
“It really bothered me, especially when I got a chance, and I would use the opportunity to actually talk [to the students] because I’m always wondering ‘Why?’” Ms. Collins said. “It’s sad to me that I have yet to hear a good reason. I’ve heard that ‘She shouldn’t have been looking at me like that’. So, you got so upset by the way somebody looked at you that you thought it was necessary to put your hands on somebody? It makes no sense.“So, the way it makes me feel, it hurts my heart. I feel like if people were more concerned with their education and their future than they are with what people think about them or getting this negative attention, we would be so much better off.”
S.A.V.E. Promise club hopes to make a positive impact on the lives of young people and our entire community. It’s currently open to new members, welcoming students from any grade level.
“I want to say everyone should join the S.A.V.E Promise club because there’s not a lot of members currently, but I think it’s a really good club and a lot of people could use the positivity in their life,” Junior London Pulphus said. “There’s not a lot of violence in my life, and I’m thankful and want to keep it that way. But, I want to help other people keep it out of their life.”
