LEXINGTON, KY. (LEX NEWS) — One Lexington Director Devine Carama says preventing the next act of gun violence starts with the community — especially those who have survived it.
Saturday, August 29 will mark two weeks since the deadly East End Day shooting at Charles Young Park. One Lexington is working to prevent more violence and says community involvement is essential.
"Untreated trauma is one of the root causes of gun violence," Carama said.
The shooting at Charles Young Park claimed the life of a teenager and injured several others, including a 5-year-old.
One Lexington is asking community members to volunteer two hours of their time for conflict resolution and violence interruption training. Carama says the effort is intentionally inclusive — reaching out even to those who may not be able to pass a background check.
"There's a lot of people out there that have lived experience that wanna help but oftentimes because they can't pass a background check they're not allowed in the community center. They're not allowed at the school, but there's still a part for them to play and so we're reaching directly out to those individuals and we wanna get them this training so that they got the tools to be able to help in any given situation," Carama said.
Carama says lived experience is a critical component of effective violence prevention work.
"Gun violence prevention is holistic. Everybody has a part to play. It doesn't matter what your background is, but when it comes to mediating beefs, when it comes to mitigating retaliatory violence, when it comes to street outreach, lived experience has to be a part of that work," Carama said.
"You can't heal the streets without the streets," Carama said.
In addition to the training, One Lexington will host community healing sessions at Shiloh Baptist Church in the East End beginning in September.
"So starting September 8th, on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month, we'll be at Shiloh Baptist Church in the East End, and we're gonna be hosting community healing sessions from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. We'll be doing sound therapy, music, and art, but we'll also have licensed mental health and trauma specialists in the building," Carama said.
The organization hopes its training and healing sessions will help prevent conflicts from escalating into another tragedy.
Anyone interested in participating can email Carama at Dcarama@lexingtonky.gov
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