The G.R.E.A.T. Foundation, Inc. (GFI): “Making communities safe by investing in proven research and evidence-based prevention techniques that cops teach to help kids avoid gangs and violence.” The GFI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that was created in 2006 to help reduce violence and develop positive life skills amongst our nation’s youth by supporting the Gang Resistance Education And Training Program (G.R.E.A.T.) and G.R.E.A.T. Police Officer Instructors around the country and abroad. The GFI is dedicated to providing the G.R.E.A.T. Program with charitable, educational, and training aid designed to enhance public safety through youth crime prevention. The GFI works to fill the financial void due to the decrease in federal government grants that have been awarded to the G.R.E.A.T. Program and to help make G.R.E.A.T. self-sustaining.
G.R.E.A.T. PROGRAM
The G.R.E.A.T. Program is a national gang and violence prevention program built around school-based, law enforcement officer-instructed classroom curricula. The program is intended as an immunization against delinquency, youth violence, and gang membership for children in the years immediately before the prime ages for introduction into gangs and delinquent behavior. Certified law enforcement officer instructors teach the G.R.E.A.T. lessons through four unique programs: a 13-session middle school curriculum, an elementary school curriculum, a summer program and a special curriculum and resource guide for families. These programs work synergistically to reinforce each other and to complement other life skills programs within schools and the community. G.R.E.A.T. lessons focus on providing life skills to students to help them avoid using delinquent behavior and violence to solve problems.
The National Institute of Justice commissioned a nationwide long-term evaluation of the G.R.E.A.T. Program. Led by the University of Missouri-St Louis, this rigorously-designed, double-blind, multi-component research and evaluation found that the G.R.E.A.T. Program is implemented as it is intended. The research and evaluation results also show that G.R.E.A.T. has the intended program effects on youth gang membership and on a number of risk factors and social skills thought to be associated with gang membership.