ARISE Foundation Will Provide Essential Life Skills Training to the Metropolitan D.C. Police School Resource Officers

Washington, DC, December 21, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Just in time for the holidays, ARISE will continue giving the gift of valuable life skills training to the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department School Resource Officers. The training will be held at Miner Elementary School located at 601 15th Street NE. In an interesting twist, Trainer Judy Lyons grew up in D.C. and attended Miner Elementary. The school will host the workshop for several SRO’s, who are charged with the enormous task of protecting and interacting with students each day. ARISE training will teach the officers how to return to their schools and conduct life skills lessons with students.

The ARISE curricula is currently being utilized in over 30 schools in the District of Columbia in addition to several charitable, social and faith-based organizations. School Resource Officers take their training and newly-acquired knowledge and use it to teach students about anger management, gun safety, drug prevention, bully avoidance, conflict resolution and much more. ARISE created a curriculum specifically for police officers entitled, When There’s Trouble, Who do you Call? The books and the lessons it contains make a personal impact on the youth. The suspicion and distrust that tends to exist between inner-city students and police officers is eliminated through the weekly sessions. Each workshop allows the officers to spend time with the students, opening the lines of communication, building trust and forming a strong bond amongst participants that extends into the community. The ARISE Life Skills lessons give the students, who are trying to learn in one of the toughest school districts in the country, the tools they need to rise above the fray and go on to become happy, productive members of society.

Ingrid Dixon, a resource officer with the Metro D.C. Police Department, knew the students at her school would like the lessons based on her own experiences with the training.

“When I was trained in ARISE,” Dixon said, “I enjoyed the training so much that I couldn’t wait to see how my youth would respond to the lessons. After using the material with the youth, I learned that they enjoyed the lessons just as much as I thought they would.”

For more information or to schedule a training, visit ariselifeskills.org

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