London youth organisations fight for survival

A leading London youth charity has called for organisations working with young people to innovate and remain a source of hope and support as they face mounting pressures.

London Youth, a charity who have worked in the sector for 130 years, have warned organisations 2021 will be the most important year of their career due to the pandemic's impact.

The charity reflected on the pressures young people face with lost schooling and increases in mental health issues, poverty and unemployment.

A Youth and Violence Commission report from summer 2020 warned that this social and economic devastation amplified by Covid-19 could lead to an increase in serious youth violence.

London Youth’s Head of Development Gareth Price said: “This generation of young people, they need sources of hope and support.

“To provide that hope and support we all need to pull together, innovate and embrace new ways of working.”

However, their June 2020 report highlighted nearly a third of its 650 member organisations could struggle to operate within six months and over a quarter had issues with running costs.

The charity has called for the Government to release the £500 million committed to the youth sector and to consider repurposing national citizen service resources but funding is at risk due to the economic impact of the pandemic.

London-based youth mindset and life coach, Ricky Gardner said: “The lockdowns have been a heaven sent in terms of keeping young people at home so they are no longer engaging in certain arguments as much which is allowing their anger towards society to subside.”

Through 30 years-experience of working with young people and London councils, Ricky says that all youth services need to innovate to meet the needs of the digitally-minded and entrepreneurial generation of young people.

His company Revo Seccus, based in Harlesden, moves away from the traditional youth club activities like sport and crafts and instead it mentors 13-24-year-olds for the future.

It aims to hone their interests, be that from business to arts, teach them transferable skills and expose them to experience and carers paths within the industry.

The project also targets one of the main pressures on young people by teaching them how to avoid youth violence, gangs and county lines.

Young people raising money for the NSPCC. Image Credit: Ricky Gardner.

Young people working with Revo Seccus. Image Credit: Ricky Gardner

The Ministry of Justice reported a 25% decrease from September 2019 to September 2020 of juveniles aged 10-17 sentenced or cautioned for a knife or offensive weapon crime.

However, it is suspected Covid restrictions and lockdowns will have significantly impacted recent data as the number of incidents had previously increased by 18% from September 2016 to 2019.

When looking at knife crime from all ages across the UK, London recorded the highest rate of 179 offences involving a knife per 100,000 population in 2019/20, a slight increase on a rate of 169 in 2018.

Youth volunteers working with Ricky Gardner. Image Credit: Ricky Gardner

“One thing we do know, no child is born evil. It's the things they've witnessed that then come out in their perceptions of the world,” said Ricky.

He has witnessed many influences draw children and young people to crime and violence, including being surrounded by a materialistic world and social pressures.

A report conducted by the London Greater Authority also confirmed a strong link between those in deprivation, poverty, and facing poor mental health are more vulnerable to being groomed into youth violence.

Ricky argued: “It comes from fear and the fear is given to them that society can't save them.

“When they hear adults complaining about poverty, who's making decisions for them, and that they don't feel safe.

“And then they see this young man is 20-years-old and he protects himself, makes his own money, does everything that he wants to do, who are you going to be gravitated to?”

Salvatore Vaccaro, 21, has worked with Ricky since he was 13-years-old and through his mentorship he has now developed his own Alkaline water company during the lockdowns.

He explained, as English is his third language, he struggled expressing his emotions and was often deemed aggressive and intimidating at school but Ricky helped develop this alongside his mindset.

Salvatore said: “[Through Ricky] I kind of found more meaning into life. Before I was out on the streets just running around doing silly things.

“If I didn’t go to him after school, I would have probably ended up around the wrong crowd and probably not even had the jobs that I got because of what he put me through.”

Foreign Exchange programme with Italian and British students working with Revo Seccus. Image Credit: Ricky Gardner.

Another grassroots project innovating their youth work is the creative design company To The T, based in Kilburn.

Their workshops focus on channeling frustrations and trauma into a creative outlet which they believe can have a theraputic impact on the young person.

Through this, the company created an experimental film ‘The Other Youth’ (T.O.Y) which brought together ten London artists to challenge peoples’ perceptions and prejudices of young people and to highlight the issues they face.

Founder and Creative Director Tamsin Nathan said: “The main aim of T.O.Y is to evoke empathy and compassionate understanding towards this young black male growing up and born into a challenging environment."

The film project has a “dark aesthetic” which uses light and dark symbolism and mirrors to present how the youth faces a negative image projected on to them.

Tamsin explained the toy guns and knives represent the youth’s difficulty to discriminate between childhood toys and the real weapon they are later introduced to, while the manipulation of the toy putty is to represent the youth being used as a toy in political games.

The project conveys the realities of youth violence and crime as it is based on Tamsin’s experience of being the first on the scene when 15-year-old Quamari Serunkuma-Barnes was fatally stabbed outside his school Capital City Academy on January 23, 2017.

He was the fifth of 21 children and teens killed by a knife that year. In June 2020, Quamari's sister was also shot at multiple times as she tried to shield her 2-year-old son. The child survived a near-fatal shot to the head by "sheer chance".

In response to T.O.Y, Quamari’s father Paul Barnes said: "After what we’ve been through it’s about time we shed a light on what’s going on out there in the real world.

“It’s showing you the forgotten souls. Like the film says he started off as a good son, then they lose their way. They are victims until they reach a certain age.”

Quamari's mother, Lillian Serunkuma, says that the government needs to support grassroot organisations more as they are usually started by those with a personal connection to the issue but they do not recieve suffienct central funding to carry out their work to its full potential.

Lillian said: "A more holistic approach is needed for services with a clear future path for young people, especially those who are in extra care. Also having a consistent approach but it has to be bespoke to the individual child and sometimes requires family involvement."

There are many youth organisations working to provide young people with a better future but a repeated cry is for better funding and support.

In February 2020 the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced he was injecting another £55.5 million of funding into tackling the complex underlying causes of violent crime, including funding projects which provide positive opportunities to disadvantaged young people.

However, when emergency coronavirus funding was introduced all previous plans were deeply disrupted.

But the ongoing systemic issues which were confirmed as a strong link to 'youth violence' of deprivation, poverty and poor mental health still prevail, and the young people most affected continue to bear the brunt of it.

Photography Credit: Damian Duncan