#Chances4Children: NCS and Onside lead events to tackle youth violence
Fiona Simpson
Friday, September 17, 2021
Youth organisations have joined forces to host a series of workshops designed to combat youth violence.
Led by the National Citizen Service (NCS) and youth service provider OnSide, a series of youth-led peer-to-peer workshops are set to kick off in Manchester this month.
Four “Hackathons of Hope” will take place across UK cities including Belfast, Glasgow and Cardiff on different topics where young people discuss and debate the issues that underpin the crime and violence impacting the country’s poorest communities.
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The initiative is part of work by the Hope Collective Partnership which was set up in 2020 to support the Damilola Taylor Trust’s 20th anniversary campaign after the 10-year-old schoolboy was stabbed in south London.
The collective is a partnership of organisations including youth charities, corporate organisations, health and justice professionals and the UK’s Violence Reduction Units.
The first event called Changing the Conversation, which will take place on 18 September, at the Hack at Mahdlo Youth Zone in Oldham, Greater Manchester, aims to establish real change for the UK’s most vulnerable communities and help them to tackle poverty, violence and discrimination, the partnership said.
Topics covered across all four events include mental and physical wellbeing, racism and division, housing and environment, and education and employment.
A London “hackathon” took place in July addressing poverty and inequality.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has backed the Hope Collective Partnership’s programme and declared 7 December – Damilola Taylor’s birthday – as an annual day of youth-led social action called the Day of Hope.
There will be a series of online events staged during the day that cover all the areas discussed in the physical events.
NCS chief executive Mark Gifford said: “The hack events are a brilliant opportunity to put young people's voices at the forefront of these discussions and support them to explore and develop innovative solutions to societal challenges.
“Our events team, who developed the hack format, are passionate about the project and the way it brings so many different organisations into the mix in partnership.”
Damilola’s father Richard Taylor added: “It is the 20th anniversary of the Damilola Taylor Trust this year. Last year’s plans around the 20th anniversary of the tragedy were sadly affected by the pandemic.
“What was so wonderful though was the way the Hope Collective fast became such an enormous project. The surrounding conditions that impacted Damilola’s death were clearly marked by the poverty and inequality in the place where he lived.
“It is long overdue that society’s attention turned to finding effective solutions rather than just focusing on the symptoms like knife crime.”