Applying lessons from war-torn Africa to Chicago

“I SEE A van, suspicious as hell. I keep walking. They just pull up, get to shooting. I was just trying to get to my man’s crib, four houses away. My mother say I died. I still got a bullet lodged in my liver right now. That shit was painful; worst feeling ever. I died and they brought me back.”

Damien, a slender man in sports clothes and red running shoes, knows dangers lurk in some neighbourhoods. In the basement of a YMCA on Chicago’s South Side, he tells of being thrown out of home when he was 14. He has since been shot, pistol-whipped and imprisoned. Several friends have been killed, including two in a span of just eight days. “I know it’s time to do something different, I just want to see my daughter grow up”, he says.