How ACT Supports the Community
We have delivered our knife awareness workshops to over 20,000 young people in schools, youth centre’s & college’s, and have organised numerous events to engage young people in the West Midlands and the North of England under our Annual Peace ACT Festival.
Over the last few years ACT has dedicated it’s time and resources to working with schools to provide an effective response to youth violence using our; knife and weapons awareness programme, behaviour intervention service, mentoring, youth coaching, training & parental support. Also helping schools to review their policies around youth violence, exclusions and knife carrying to address the growing concerns.
ACT has worked on numerous youth violence initiatives including working with the Police Crime Commissioner as a partner in the Anti Weapons Group, along with British Iron Works & the Surrender your knife campaign, Birmingham Empowerment forum, The sports HUB in Perry Barr among various other faith leaders, where we were responsible in the installation of Knife bins. We were awarded the Community Awareness Award from Words for Weapons in 2015 for our work across the West Midlands and in Sheffield, as well as runners up for several other awards.
Community of Practice
ACT is a partner of University College Birmingham (UCB) and has been part of a Community of Practice (CoP) group of practitioners, who meet on a regular basis to provides mutual support, dialogue, share practice and raise awareness through key events. CoP is dedicated to improving the response of practitioners to the rise in youth violence via annual conferences, training & workshops to parents, practitioners and professionals.
Youth Inclusion Support Project (YISP)
ACT CIC has also had to adapt our way of working to continue to meet the needs of the young people we work with and organisations we support during COVID19 and the Lockdown.
With the support of Birmingham City Council and the Police Crime Commissioners Office, we are pleased to announce the launch of our Youth Inclusion Support Project (YISP).
The project will offer young people and their families specialist support workers and mentors.
Knife Awareness Project
The Knife Awareness Project (KAP) is a specialist educational programme developed by ACT CiC to prevent youth violence. Our programmes seeks to engage young people and effectively challenge the types of thinking and behaviour that can lead to the loss of their own life or someone else’s.
KAP was developed following the fatal stabbings of five young people in Birmingham in a 12 months period, which began on 21st September 2012, with the stabbing of Kyle Sheehan (16), followed by Lance Gregory (24), Christina Edkins (16), Hasan Mahmood (15), Azim Azam (16) and ending on 21st September 2013 with the death of Joshua Ribera (18). This project aims to make our communities safer places for our children and young people to grow up in, by reducing the amount of young people that carry knives through a programme of powerful assemblies and emotionally riveting workshops delivered to educate young people of the dangers and consequences of carrying knives.
The Peace ACT
The Peace ACT is a reducing youth violence initiative developed by ACT CIC that calls on whole communities to take collective responsibility and action to reduce violence and increase acts of peace within their communities.
The Peace Act helps to bring people together, share knowledge, practice and learn about the nature of violence, and identify practical steps and solutions to respond to violence and create more peaceful and harmonious communities for children and young people to grow up in.
Peace Act was established on International Peace Day in 2014, since then we have organised many events, activities and workshops touching the lives of over 15,000 people though:
- Our knife awareness workshops
- School assemblies
- Football tournaments
- Spoken word events
- Fun days
- Knife bin launches
- Vigils
- Fairs
- Community festivals and music concerts.
We have managed to reach over 3.5 million people through our campaigns and peace initiatives.
The Peace ACT is now seeking to engage with companies who would like to get involved and help us in our mission to support communities in reducing youth violence such as knife crime, bullying, suicide and poor mental health among children and young people.
“Youth violence has an impact on our whole community, therefore we all have a duty to take ACTion and be apart of the solution!”
Raising Asparations Through Peer Leadership
The Raising Aspirations through Peer Leadership programme will support young people to raise their aspirations, awareness and attainment in education, employment and life in general through the development of young people as peer leaders. The programme will focus on providing young people with social and emotional support to address barriers of marginalisation & disengagement, which can result in poor behaviour, poor attitude to learning, low attainment, self-esteem & confidence, poor emotional well-being, low academic achievement and even exclusion. This programme will support young people to re-engage, find purpose, and improve behaviour, access learning, raising self-esteem, self-belief, motivation, aspirations and confidence.
The RAP programme is a 12 or 18 week programme, which will support young people to take on a leader’s perspective and ultimately become a peer leader, educator or advocate around some of the current issues impacting on young people’s positive development, such as youth violence, crime & social media. Through
a series of workshops we take young people on a journey to explore personal and group identities, examine values and explore how young people are engaged via social media.
Mapping Youth Violence
ACT is currently carrying out a mapping and gapping exercise for the West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) in conjunction with BVSC. The project aims to launch a new youth services portal to help identify youth organisations delivering universal, prevention and intervention services around youth violence, as part of a wider strategy to prevent youth violence, which also includes universal services for young people.
The YouthMap Portal Is Being Designed to:
- Help give organisations more visibility for commissioners to fund services;
- Help other organisations, agencies and practitioners to connect and make referrals into services that exist across the West Midlands.
The YouthMap portal will be launched in April 2020
If you would like to be included in the portal, please use the button below and complete the survey, so we can get your services uploaded into the YouthMap.
