Nearly 2,000 Naval Air Technical Training Center students participated in the 4th Annual NATTC and Naval Air Station Pensacola Fleet and Family Support Center-sponsored 'Amazing SAPR Race' April 29.

The event immediately followed NATTC's 'Light Up the Night' sunrise gathering, also an annual NATTC function, which featured guest speakers and information in support of the Navywide Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.

According to Amazing SAPR Race organizer and NATTC Instructor Chief Aviation Support Equipment Technician Shanta Bernard, the annual 5K run is designed as an educational event -- a proactive effort to instruct participating students about sexual assault resources, the role of alcohol in sexual assault, bystander intervention and supporting victims of sexual assault.

"At NATTC we have a large amount of new Sailors," Bernard said. "While we're here to train them in aviation rates, we also want to make sure they're trained on how to be good Sailors, and that includes the prevention of sexual assault. So we take this month, the month of April and SAAPM very seriously and we do things like the Amazing SAPR Race to help them be aware in preventing sexual assault."

The 3.1-mile course included three stations at which participants were required to stop and receive a brief talk on the role of alcohol in sexual assault, provide an example of different types of intervention, observe a brief skit and identify what type of intervention was portrayed. Signs along the race route provided information to assist participants in answering questions at each stop.

Bernard said events such as this continue to stress the importance the Navy places on sexual assault prevention, and hoped the Amazing SAPR Race provided an entertaining and educational experience for participants.

"There's a lot more stress and focus on prevention of sexual assault -- that's why we have SAAPM now," said Bernard. "The biggest thing I hope the students can gain from this is prevention and reporting. We want students to be able to identify, help each other out through prevention, by stepping in when they see something wrong and being able to help their shipmates report if they need to."

For more than 70 years, with the last two decades at NAS Pensacola, NATTC has been providing training and increasing readiness within the Naval Aviation Enterprise. The facility graduates approximately 15,000 Navy, Marine Corps and international students annually and is the largest training facility in the Navy post Recruit Training Command.

NATTC is part of the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training, which provides single site management for Navy and Marine Corps aviation technical training.

CNATT is the technical training agent for the Naval Aviation Enterprise, an organization designed to advance and sustain naval aviation warfighting capabilities at an affordable cost, and is the largest training center under the Naval Education and Training Command.

For more news from Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training, visit http://www.navy.mil/.