ONE Lexington is highlighting a proactive approach to gun violence prevention. In effect since 2024, Senate Bill 128 is in place to provide opportunities for youth to make money working for Kentucky nonprofits.Devine Carama, dir ector of ONE Lexington, is reflecting on alarming feedback he received from a 13-year-old nearly three years ago."When you got young people telling us it's easier to get a gun than a job, to me that's devastating," Carama said.What made it worse, several youth told him the same thing in school mentorship programs, summer programs, and talks on Spurr Road, Carama said. "We're just right down the street from a school. I'll be in mentoring groups all day working with those young people who've been directly affected by gun violence, dealing with that trauma," Carama noted.The ONE Lexington team presented those concerns to the Commission on Race and Access to Opportunity in Frankfort along with its daily work addressing youth and young adult gun violence."Senator David Givens really wanted to do something to address this issue," Carama said.It led to Senate Bill 128, passed into law last year, it allows youth ages 12 and 13 to make money working limited hours for vetted Kentucky nonprofits."They're gonna be working for organizations that are on the ground level making our city better," Carama noted.Carama hopes this will not only help the area's most vulnerable youth earn income the right way, but to develop workforce skills at a very young age."One thing we hear from a lot of employers that are hiring young adults or maybe even teenagers, they're not workforce ready. We want to hire them but they just don't have the skill set whether it's COVID or whatever it is, it really set that age group back. So now the 12 and 13-year-olds can work and can begin to develop those workforce ready skills, so that when they're teenagers or young adults they can already have that experience," Carama said.Getting that experience with safeguards in place, these 12 and 13-year-olds aren't allowed to work more than three hours a day or 18 hours a week. The work cannot be performed during school hours and jobs cannot involve commerce or production of goods."It's also making them better people as they develop those workforce skills as well," Carama noted.Potentially it can provide a wide range of opportunities. Carama is spending the next few weeks communicating the importance of Senate Bill 128 asking local nonprofits to keep it in mind when fundraising. ...read more read less