Friday 23rd March 2018
Friday 23rd March 2018
Nine community and grassroots anti-knife initiatives across London have received a share of £250,000 from City Hall as part of the Mayor’s comprehensive strategy to tackle violence and knife crime across the capital, with a further £1.15m to be awarded later this spring.
The successful groups work with young people to help prevent and protect them from knife crime. They include a boxing club in Brixton, music training in Hackney and Tower Hamlets, and support workshops and activities in Croydon, Southwark, and Lambeth.
The funding is part of Sadiq Khan’s comprehensive Knife Crime Strategy published in June 2017, which included a £250,000 Knife Crime Community Seed Fund. Since then, Sadiq has provided an additional £1.15m for these projects through his new Young Londoners Fund, taking the total to £1.4m.
The first nine projects to benefit are:
Croydon BME Forum – £49,736 to deliver training and support to five grassroots organisations who provide activities for people affected by knife crime in Croydon, reaching at least 60 people
Somali Relief and Islamic cultural centre – £6,337 to deliver five community consultation events for 100 Somali parents and young people in Southwark to raise awareness of knife crime
Hammersmith and Fulham Anti-Tribalism Movement – £31,173 for the Anti-Tribalism Movement to work in partnership with Council of Somali Organisations, delivering the ‘Quit Knives Saves Lives Desistance Programme’. This programme is a much-needed programme to tackle the spike in anti-social behaviour affecting young Somali men living in London.
Mancunian Way – £8,650 to deliver an outreach project from a community centre reaching around 100 young estate residents engaged in or at risk of knife crime in Hackney
Dwaynamics CIC – £49,780 to provide boxing and health activities to 192 young people in Lambeth and run a series of knife crime workshops
The Flavasum Trust – £14,016 to deliver awareness-raising workshops to 4,000 pupils in 20 London schools in areas worst affected by knife crime, including Newham, Lambeth and Tower Hamlets.
Raw Material Music and Media Education – £34,498 to support 50 young people in Brixton who are offenders, or are at risk of offending, to engage in creative activities and training and employment workshops over 40 weeks
WISE Youth Trust – £20,000 to deliver workshops, music production and digital media skills courses for 150 young people in Hackney and Tower Hamlets
ML Community Enterprise – £32,664 to deliver a therapeutic support project for 24 young male and female victims of crime and violence in Lambeth
During the development of the Mayor’s Strategy and his new anti-knife crime campaign, ‘London Needs You Alive’, many of the young people consulted said they want to be engaged with by people from their communities who they know and trust, and who have experienced some of the same issues and challenges around knife crime.
With that in mind, the community funding has been boosted to £1.4m by the Mayor’s Young Londoners Fund, created by Sadiq to support education, sport and cultural activities for young people to help tackle knife crime and youth violence, which has been rising across the country since 2014. In contrast to this investment by the Mayor, central government continues to cut vital services including £22m from London’s youth services since 2011, which has resulted in the closure of some 30 youth centres that had served at least 12,700 young Londoners*.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “As Mayor, I’m doing everything possible in London not only to be tough on knife crime, but tough on the causes of knife crime too.
“City Hall has stepped up where the government is letting our young people down. We are providing unprecedented additional funds to the Met police, driving forward a full and comprehensive Knife Crime Strategy and our new Young Londoners Fund will help many young people to thrive, prosper and make the right choices to avoid being sucked into a life of crime.
“Prevention is the most effective tool we have, and with the funds announced today, these community and grass-roots projects will be able to help root out violence within our communities and give more young Londoners the skills, support and aspirations they need to turn away from crime and fulfil their potential.”
Pastor Lorraine Jones, Dwaynamics, said: “We are thrilled and extremely excited to have been granted funding from the Mayor’s Community Seed Fund. This funding will go directly towards our new Errol Christie Awards initiative which will tackle the issues surrounding knife crime through a number of workshops, supported by sports programmes through boxing from which Dwaynamics was founded. This work will ensure that our at-risk youth have the support, love, and attention they need to go on to be the champions we know they are whether it be in their professional or personal lives. The Errol Christie awards will be the defining factor when a young man or woman makes their most important life decisions. This will keep them dedicated and focussed, steering them away from the growing gang culture we have seen in Lambeth. The legacy of my son Dwayne Simpson lives on”
The successful groups work with young people to help prevent and protect them from knife crime. They include a boxing club in Brixton, music training in Hackney and Tower Hamlets, and support workshops and activities in Croydon, Southwark, and Lambeth.
