A recent wave of violence in Chattanooga has led to continued conversations over how to address crime, shootings and gang violence.

While many of these discussions have taken place in the world of policing, education can also play a key role.

On Friday, we visited one of the city’s newest early learning centers, and found out how combatting violence can start even before preschool.

For Chattanooga Pastor Dr. Ternae Jordan Sr., aiming to stop violence has been his life’s work.

But recently, he’s shifted how he approaches addressing this issue.

Within this pivot, there may be a lesson for the entire community.

Pastor Jordan says he’s buried 105 young people, lost to violence, over the course of about 15 years.

"It’s been a powerful and a painful journey," he said.

That journey began for him in 1992, when he had to bury two 15-year-olds killed during a gang initiation.

"That broke my heart, and it was there that we realized we needed to start impacting kids and families," said Jordan.

A year later, his own 15-year-old son was waiting for his mom to pick him up at the YMCA.

"Shots were fired and two bullets entered the YMCA, one struck my son in the head," he said.

His son survived, but these experiences solidified his life’s work, trying to “stop the madness.”

Pastor Jordan started his "Stop the Madness" program to create more positive opportunities for adolescents, in order to reduce their chances of getting involved with gangs and violence.

"We had self-esteem, motivational, self-worth classes that we taught kids with, we had camps where we took kids out of the concrete jungle who had never heard the crickets at night," Jordan said. "We got them to see other things, rather than the things they were normally seeing in their own environment."

But recently he changed his approach.

"We were trying to catch kids at 12, 13, 14, which was a little late in the game," said Jordan. "It was really placed on my heart that we were trying to catch kids too late."

That's part of why just two weeks ago, he opened the Purpose Point early learning center at his church, with a focus on working with the community's youngest children.

"Statistics show that if you can’t read by the third grade, in many instances, it’s a pipeline to prison. And we need to stop this pipeline," said Jordan.

Pupose Point's Director, Ellwanda White, says children’s brains develop most in their first few years of life. That's why she says early interventions can have a major impact on later life outcomes.

"Children learn impulse control at a very young age, and if they don’t learn impulse control they don’t have that, so they’re more prone to be involved with gangs, and not know how to control their anger, their emotions," White said.

That's why both White and Pastor Jordan say it's critical for the community to invest further in early learning programs.

"I’m sure there are other churches out there that would like to open an early childhood program, but you have to have resources to do that, and you have to have community buy-in to do that," said White.

She explained that in addition to providing programming for children, Purpose Point also offers services for parents, including a food bank, community health center, and parenting & budgeting classes.

"Basically anything they would need to help them to be a more effective parent," she said.

Pastor Jordan says he hopes their center will be a model for others.

"There are so many churches, there are so many organizations, that are located in the heart of communities where these needs are," Jordan concluded.

School board member Karitsa Jones told us about 4,000 children enter kindergarten each year in Hamilton County.

Of those, she says only about 40% show up on day one prepared for the journey.