BOSTON - In any major city in the U.S., it's almost inevitable that kids will be exposed to violence.
While violent crime has gone down 7 percent in Boston, the death toll among teens has doubled.
With that in mind, the Boston Police Department is working to change those outcomes through the department's teen academy where young people are taught conflict resolution and leadership skills.
In it's ninth year, the program is graduating one of it's biggest classes.
On Thursday night, dozens of teens are set to graduate from the academy, where they'll be turning the trauma they experience on city streets into change by taking the lessons learned at the academy back to their communities.
Jalen Martinez, 17, one of the graduates, says he just wants to make sure kids in his community feel safe doing everyday, mundane things like riding their bikes or going to school.
"I'm coming from a family of about 10 that are just cousins and uncles that live with me here in Massachusetts," said Martinez. "You've got the higher class and you have the lower class in the South End and I live kind of in the middle, between everything."
Martinez says being in the middle of everything has never been easy. While his mother and grandmother did everything they could to shield Martinez from violence, the fear of it always lingered in the back of his mind.
"I was about ten and it was my brother's close friend who had gotten stabbed to death," said Martinez. "As a little kid I was scared to walk to the bus stop thinking it could be me next and I was only nine or ten years old and last year my friend Chad got shot and killed."
For many in similar situations, the Boston Teen Academy offers support for teens aged 14 to 18 with a six-week training which includes lessons in conflict resolution, community policing and goal setting.
For Martinez, the teen academy is a step in the right direction to his dream of becoming a police officer.
"Being a police officer, it gives me a small position of power to let them know there's no reason to be scared," said Martinez.
As he graduates from the Boston Police Teen Academy, Martinez will be entering his senior year of high school, and has already set his eyes on going to UMass Amherst, Northeastern or UMass Boston.
Maya Nunes, of Dorchester, has also spent the last six weeks at the teen academy. Nunes told Boston 25 News one of her long-term goals is to eventually become Boston's first female Cape Verdean police commissioner.
"There's a lot of gang activity and all the youth follow the men who are in the gangs and see them as the best examples of who they want to be," said Nunes. "It's very difficult, last summer one of my friends died. Three boys in my neighborhood died and one recently died this year as well due to gang violence."
Nunes first learned about the teen academy from her mom and immediately applied to be a part of it. As excited as she is about the program, she says she hasn't told the people in her neighborhood.
"It makes me feel disappointed that I'm really scared because I don't know who to talk to, who to trust because those who I thought were my friends when I was younger are no longer my friends and they're the ones who could actually put me in danger."
Over the course of the training, Nunes says she's built relationships with others just like her.
"It gave me empowerment as a woman," said Nunes. "If I'm able to show these men in the academy that I have the potential to be something greater than they are, that I have the potential to do the same thing when I go out in the real world."
Nunes is currently a rising freshman at Bridgewater State University who has big plans for the future.
"Move up in the ranks and hopefully [I'll be] the first female Cape Verdean commissioner in the city of Boston," said Nunes.