Croydon Conservatives supported the ‘Cut it Out 2’ football tournament through some of the community ward budgets available to Councillors. We fielded a football team, making it to the semi-finals by beating Croydon Labour! The event was organised by the London Road My Ends Programme to raise awareness of Knife Crime and the impact it has on our young people.
Knife Crime not only affects families who lose a loved one to death but also families who now have a relative with a serious conviction. We need firmer action on perpetrators and this also acts as a deterrent for young people currently involved in a life of crime who often feel they need to carry a knife for protection. However, we must also realise the socio-economic conditions that perpetuate knife-crime such as poverty and a lack of positive future aspirations.
Initiatives like the Legacy Youth Zone and sporting events such as ‘Cut it Out’ are really important ways of providing solutions that target a mass youth audience. Grassroots organisations like Croydon BME and Lives not Knives have done a great deal of work on this issue over the years and I’m very pleased that Croydon is receiving more funding to support agile and collaborative local interventions that will target specific areas in our borough.
It is important that we raise the aspirations of our youth and the awareness of how to access their future ambitions. I hope this multi-agency approach provides a community driven response to tackling these issues by providing mentoring and educational programmes for specific young people and families who we don’t often reach through conventional methods.
A special thank you to the PJs Group, Palace for Life Foundation, CVA, Croydon BME, The Metropolitan Police and everyone involved in making the event a success.