For a few hours on Saturday, teenagers paraded around a couple of blocks in downtown Suffolk, holding signs and calling out to passersby. They weren’t demonstrating against something, though. Instead, they were proclaiming their support for those fighting cancer and encouraging others to do likewise by pulling into the parking lot beside the Western Tidewater Community Services building on South Saratoga Street and paying for a car wash. Funds raised during the event are to be contributed to the Nobody Fights Alone campaign, which supports cancer patients at Sentara Obici Hospital.

The car wash was a bit of community service presented as an appropriate capstone to a program 18 Suffolk students have been involved in since Feb. 25. The Suffolk Youth Public Safety Academy has concluded its 10th year, and its young participants are already showing the positive results of their months-long interaction with the city’s police officers, firefighters and other public safety officials.

During this year’s academy, which started Feb. 25, 18 teenagers have toured fire stations, learned about bullying and drug awareness, used fire extinguishers, simulated hostage negotiations, learned about the dangers of texting while driving, talked about gang awareness, processed fingerprint evidence, learned about arson investigations and more.

Some of those students now have plans to pursue careers in public safety. Others have other plans. Either way, though, the program has taught them some important lessons about respect, discipline, self esteem and teamwork. Those lessons are even more important than the things students learned about fire safety, police work, safe driving and the other topics that are ostensibly the point of the program.

In fact, the participating students might think it’s all about public safety, but those involved in teaching and mentoring the kids — many of whom are referred to it because of troubles at home or in school — understand that the real point of it is to connect with young people who might otherwise be headed for trouble, to intervene in their lives in a way that changes them and gives them a new set of possibilities for their lives.

“We try to teach better choices,” Detective Joyce Williams said last week. “We try to show them there are options for you; there are better choices for situations you get into. We see a big improvement in the kids in all the sessions.”

Congratulations to the students who have completed this year’s installment of the Suffolk Youth Public Safety Academy. And thanks to the City Council, which has funded the program ever since the grant that initiated it 10 years ago ran out. This is the kind of program that could easily be left on the table at the end of tough budget negotiations. We’re glad city officials see such value in it.