The City of Kamloops will be getting $2 million in federal funding to develop a gang and gun violence prevention program aimed at young people.

Community and Protective Services Director, Byron McCorkell, told Thursday’s Community and Protective Services Committee Meeting that the money will be used to hire a coordinator and a consultant in Kamloops.

“We are pretty excited about that, with our RCMP partners, to be able to address those issues,” he said. “It is an area that we don’t talk about too much and thankfully we haven’t had to, but it is an area that we think that this effort will pay dividends as we start talking to some of the youth in Kamloops around these issues.”

McCorkell says the city was also given a 2008 Porsche Cayman that was seized by Civil Forfeiture BC.

“We’ll be using that as a statement piece for the guns and gangs program so we can attract some attention to the program while it’s out and about,” he added. “We’re looking forward to receiving that vehicle as well.”

The former city council directed staff to apply for this grant in July of last year, with the money being doled out over four years.

In July, Community Services Manager Tammy Blundell told NL News the City of Kamloops would be reaching to other cities like Vancouver that already have these initiatives in place to see how it uses the program.

“So we are going to be relying on them corresponding with them to be able to figure out what would work best education wise, figuring out which programs would work best for our municipality,” Blundell said.