(KCPW News) One Salt Lake County Councilwoman is teaming up with kidnapping victim Elizabeth Smart to help make sure kids along the Wasatch Front are learning important safety skills. Jani Iwamoto says the RAD program, which stands for Resisting Aggression Defensively, is important because it teaches children self defense.
“They have to interactively participate and it teaches them first that no one has the right to hurt them. The second thing is that they don’t have the right to hurt anyone else, including themselves so it teaches them respect for others and not to hurt themselves,” says Iwamoto. “The third thing is it teaches them it’s not their fault.”
Iwamoto helped implement the program in her children’s school in the Granite School District several years ago and is now working with Sheriff Jim Winder and Elizabeth and Ed Smart to try and find funding to put the program into more Salt Lake County schools.
“It’s going to take a lot because of budgets and stuff, but we thought we would start small and then perhaps maybe it will go through the whole county,” says Iwamoto. “Elizabeth has a broader goal of expanding it to all the schools in the whole state, and that’s a great goal because this kind of program is something that is very worthwhile.”
The program has already been implemented throughout the Provo School District.
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