OAKLAND, Calif. - For more than two decades, the Bay Area Youth EMT program has trained hundreds of young people for careers in emergency medicine and firefighting.

"Basically, our mission is to create civic-minded citizens through the vehicle of providing them with free education to become either EMTs or firefighters," Wellington Jackson, executive director of Bay Area Youth EMT, told KTVU on Sunday.

Jackson launched the nonprofit in 2002, with the first class starting in 2003. Since then, he says he’s watched the program transform lives.

"Truly transformative in terms of watching them not have any direction or any goals and then achieve their goals to become EMTs, nurses," Jackson said. "We just... had two staff members go to med school. So it’s the range of healthcare."

More than

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