Forsyth County women and teens looking to improve their self-defense knowledge and skills will soon have the opportunity to take a free class hosted by the sheriff’s office.

On Wednesday, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, in partnership with the Cumming Library, will hold a women-only self-defense seminar for those ages 13 and up, which will be led by two deputies — usually one male and one female.

The class is designed to teach women specific self-defense techniques and help them build self-confidence while discussing situational awareness, according to Deputy Doug Rainwater, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office.

No men will be allowed at the class.

“We show different techniques for females to do on someone who wants to cause them harm, so no males are allowed,” he said. “We’ll also talk about situational awareness; you don’t want to be caught someplace where there’s nobody around and all of a sudden you realize you’re all by yourself.

“Be selective of where you go and the times when you go, especially after dark. The Greenway, [for example,] has a lot more people at 8 a.m. than 6:30 a.m.; we’ll [discuss] things like that.”

Rainwater said these classes, which the sheriff’s office tries to hold monthly, originally stemmed from neighborhood watch programs.

“We used to get calls from subdivisions asking us to do one of these classes in the clubhouse or somewhere in the subdivision,” he said. “Finally, we got so many calls that we couldn’t handle all the requests at one time and decided to just do one class once a month. It has been very successful.”

The class will be divided into two sections: classroom instructions and hands-on practical exercises.

While the class is free and no preregistration is needed, Rainwater said the sheriff’s office does have an event page on Facebook where those interested can confirm they’re going.

“[As of Monday,] we have 182 interested but 54 confirmed, so gives us a figure of how many to expect,” he said.