NW Indiana Group Working To Provide Teens Path Away From Violence
(CBS) -- A northwest Indiana outreach group begins a new year with a new leader but with the same mission: to reduce teen violence.
Project Outreach and Prevention, also known as POP, was created in 2008 by Doctor Mike McGee, chief of ER at Methodist Hospitals Emergency Services.
The organization's new executive director, Pamela Jones, says the mission is to show at-risk teenagers a way out.
"What we aim to do is to try to take teens and actually provide them a pathway to lucrative careers," Jones said. "Right now mainly in healthcare, but also in other fields as well.
Jones says the organization mentors for the long-term but also looks at measurable goals in the short-term, such as grades, going into school districts to learn where at-risk students are and why.
Jones says one of her biggest goals for 2016 is to increase understanding, tolerance and equality, not only in the streets, but in the work place and in boardrooms.