Photo Credit: Ilya S. Savenok

Vic Mensa wants to leave his mark as an activist in his city. The South Side Chicago native hopes to help the youth develop new skills while helping their communities at the same time.

This year alone, there have been over 250 homicides in Chicago. It was reported by NBC Chicago that just last weekend 56 people were wounded and four deaths. Mensa wants to make a change, so he is using his SaveMoneySaveLife Foundation to help train 11,000 students to become street medics.

“We train and equip first-aid responders in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods, and teach them how to not bleed out, how to stop blood flow from gunshot wounds,” Mensa said. Mensa continued to share how he developed the idea while in the occupied West Bank in Palestine where he met a young man from Gaza. He said, “[They] had a similar program where they trained 35 first-aid responders, I think it was in Gaza…their ambulance situation and first response situation is actually a lot like Chicago.”

Mensa said he hopes by taking this step to train young people on how to treat gunshot wounds, he’ll make a significant reduction in the number of casualties.