North Augusta High School senior Brayden Poorvin is giving his fellow senior class members a gift for life – and the ability to save a life.
On Friday, Sept. 20, Poorvin, along with around 10 instructors from Gold Cross EMS, gave hands-only CPR lessons to students in six senior homerooms.
The plan is to teach NAHS's entire class of 2020, over 300 students, how to property perform hands-only CPR. The CPR classes are being given during three dates.
"It's a skill that usually is not known for younger people," Poorvin said, "and if you know CPR, you have the ability to save life if you need to. You never know when you're going to need to be able to do it, it's just a helpful thing to know."
Poorvin is the nephew of Steven Vincent, chief operating officer of Gold Cross EMS, who said Poorvin approached him about teaching CPR to the entire senior class as a gift to his fellow students.
Poorvin came to Gold Cross and got CPR certified but took it a step further, becoming a CPR instructor himself.
Poorvin taught his own senior homeroom class how to do CPR.
"I believe that it is important for us to learn CPR because the fact that you can be stuck in any situation and there can be somebody who is dying and you can save their life," said senior Savannah Luke. "It also looks good on any type of application, like college, or job application, and it's a really good skill to learn."
Poorvin's lessons to each of the seniors isn't going to make them officially CPR certified, but they will get the opportunity to sign up to take classes. Just in Poorvin's homeroom class, 10 or around 20 students had signed up to get certified.
Read the full Aiken Standard article HERE.