DENVER (KDVR) — Denver Police reported a total of six people shot and three dead in separate shootings across the metro.
Jason McBride, with the Struggle of Love Foundation, said he personally knows young people who have been killed in recent shootings.
McBride explained to FOX31 what’s being done at the grassroots level to reach out to youth in communities affected by violence.
“Unfortunately I think we’re in for many more like it,” McBride said. “You just are trying to get these young people to understand that there’s much, much more than the world they see inside their neighborhoods.”
Violence in communities around the metro can be cured, according to McBride, by showing young people more than what they’re used to seeing.
“A lot of these kids don’t even know their history, and I think they don’t have a sense of self-worth so they don’t look at anybody else as worth anything either,” McBride said.
Their actual struggle, at the Struggle of Love Foundation, isn’t just aimed at showing teens that there’s a way out but also against gangs and the influence they carry in these communities.
“They’re a living, breathing thing. They evolve just like everything else,” McBride said.
The Struggle of Love Foundation, in cooperation with the Denver’s Parks and Recreation Department host what he called ‘Night Moves.’
“So we had maybe 200, 300 kids out there, we had 90 on Friday,” McBride said.
These events are intended to provide young people with something to do on late nights and — as McBride explained — to hopefully leave them with the lasting message: they’re better than the violence around them.
“Even if you don’t go home, you don’t have to do anything wrong, you don’t have to be involved in anything wrong,” McBride said.
This summer, the Struggle of Love Foundation is expected to host more programs for children in communities affected by violence.
Click here, for more information about the foundation.