Detroit organization working to stop violence through peer mentoring
(CBS DETROIT) - Curbing the violence in Detroit is at the forefront of a lot of people's minds after multiple shootings in the city over the last several weeks.
A local mentoring organization says it knows the right formula to bring peace to Wayne County.
"The cure to violence is forgiving. And the cause of violence is retaliation and revenge," said John Phelps, the president and CEO of Life Directions,
Life Directions, a mentoring program based out of Western International High School in Detroit, says it found the right formula to curb the violence in the city.
"What we're basically doing is finding young people that are making the school work for them with young people that don't know how to make it work. And then we put them together, and we have a 70% turnaround rate," said Phelps, who began the program in the school 50 years ago. They've seen no violence with participants, like Ricky Schwesing.
"I think it was just mostly depression because I was mostly alone sad, you know, didn't have that social interaction that it needed. So I was more self-isolated," Schwesing said.
Joining the program and participating in group activities, he says, has been life-changing.
"Having a mentor is pretty awesome. It's guiding their guidance is really helpful. Because there's some times I don't know what I'm doing. And they're here to bring me back up and, you know, carry on what I get to do," said Schwesing.
"Our goal is to help them give them guidance into opportunities that are out there for them to make the decision themselves and go based on what they want to do in their life," said Schwesing's mentor, Othon Economopoulos.
Economopoulos spends time with Schwesing weekly and sees benefits from the program that he wishes he had when he was younger.
"They look up to me like older brother Roma ... rather than just a parent that's, you know, more strict, more 'I can't really tell you because I'm scared,' but you can confide into your older brother more than you can to your parents. And that's a way that I think they see me," said Economopoulos.
It's that relationship, that stops violence before it happens.
"If you just let them raise each other, and to be able to they can prevent things from happening. But you got to have somebody in your life who loves you when you do something really dumb at two in the morning," said Phelps.
This weekend, Life Directions is hosting its annual fundraiser gala, Spark of Hope, on Saturday at Campus Martius.
