Triumph Boxing offers release from gun violence trauma for kids
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Every Saturday afternoon, a group of kids can be found sparing it out at Triumph Boxing, a gym that’s teamed up with We Bring Hope Network to create an outlet for traumatized kids.
“[It’s better to do it in here] than out there. Boxing is organized chaos,” Dubois Johnson, a coach at Triumph Boxing said.
Johnson has been working with Kristin Collins, co-founder of We Bring Hope Network, for the past year to create the Champ Camp program. He says he’s seen troubled kids be transformed by it.
“I’ve seen it heal people and it saved me, personally. Boxing is so challenging that you it forces you to focus on it, and it forces you to do something difficult. And once you realize that you can do it … you become kind of transformed into a different person,” Johnson said.
The program comes at a time when Collins says suicide rates are unimaginablely high.
“Suicide in 2020 … actually increased over 35% in the age groups of 11 to 19,” Collins said.
Collins says kids see and hear it all, including the fact that there were seven people shot in the span of one day over MLK weekend. She says the gun violence plays a part in the suicide numbers escalating.
“That’s why it’s gone up. It’s like the world is ending. We do have a few kids that are like, ‘I’ve only been good at being bad. I don’t know how to be good.’ And I’m like, ‘but here you’re going to learn what good looks like,’” Collins said.
More information about the program and We Bring Hope Network can be found on the organization’s website.