Latest news with #StGilesTrust
South Wales Argus
4 days ago
- Politics
- South Wales Argus
Welsh Government celebrates community heroes in Newport
The Welsh Government recognised the vital work of volunteers, who have improved thousands of lives across Wales. About 27 per cent of people in Wales participate in formal volunteering with charities and organisations, with many more contributing informally. The Welsh Government has invested more than £4.6 million in volunteering initiatives since April 2022, enabling more than 419,000 hours of volunteering and training for 6,710 people across Wales. Jane Hutt MS, cabinet secretary for social justice visited Newport's St Giles Trust during Volunteers Week. The trust, which has received nearly £100,000 through the Welsh Government's Strategic Volunteering Grant, supports the 'Experts By Experience Wales' project, creating volunteering opportunities for people with lived experience of the criminal justice system, poverty, violence, and exploitation. Anne-Marie Rogan, business development manager at St Giles Trust, said: "Our project aims to break down barriers for those with lived experience of adversity who want to volunteer. "We've created a self-assessment toolkit for employers across all sectors and developed a digital platform launching this month that will connect organisations with individuals seeking volunteering pathways. "This funding has been crucial in helping us drive meaningful change in how Wales approaches inclusive volunteering." At the end of Volunteers Week, MS Hutt said: "Volunteers are the backbone of our communities and Volunteers Week gives us all the opportunity to reflect on the impact volunteering has on individuals, organisations and communities across Wales. "While people give their time freely, we recognise they must be properly supported and safeguarded, which is why we remain committed to investing in people and our communities. "I thank each volunteer for their contribution and encourage everyone to continue supporting volunteering efforts that make our communities so much richer."
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Immigrant parents remove teenage sons from UK over stabbing fears
Immigrant parents in the UK, fearful of gang knife violence, are sending teenage sons back to their countries of origin, a community worker said Friday, after a boy sued his family for putting him in a Ghana boarding school. The comments come a day after a judge ruled in favour of the parents of the boy who "tricked" him into going to Ghana to be educated because they did not want him to become "yet another black teenager stabbed to death in the streets of London", their lawyer said. Junior Smart, of the St Giles Trust whose work includes helping young people leave gangs, said far from being an isolated case, the parents' actions were actually "very common" because "no-one wants their child to be killed". "I wouldn't want to say they've kidnapped their children -– they haven't -- (but) they have exercised parental authority," he said. He said parents, who began to see their once-polite and well-behaved sons carrying or getting interested in knives, appearing in grime music videos and rowing with other gang members, were taking matters "into their own hands". Countries to which parents have been returning their children included Ghana, Romania, Jamaica and Sierra Leone, Smart told AFP. He said parents were resorting to such extreme measures reasoning that "you (gang members) got to my son here, you're not going to be able to get to him in Africa, Ghana, Romania or wherever". And they were telling their children "now you're not going to have your mobile phone, you're not going to have access to the internet and you're not going to be able to talk back to me because everyone where you're going to talks to their parent with respect". Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last year knife crime in the UK had become a "national crisis" after a spate of stabbings involving teenagers. One 15-year-old boy was even knifed to death at school earlier this month. A fellow pupil has been charged with his murder. - 'Desperate' parents - The teenager who took his parents to court had been taken to Ghana and enrolled in a boarding school. His lawyers had sought to have him returned to the UK where he was born. But the High Court in London ruled on Thursday that the boy was "at real risk of suffering greater harm in returning to the UK than if he were to remain" in the West African country. "I recognise that this is, in many ways, both a sobering and rather depressing conclusion," the judge, Anthony Hayden, added. Hayden said the teenager, who cannot be identified because of his age, had been involved in criminal activity and was at the very least "on the periphery" of gang culture. Although he accepted the parents had deceived him, he said they had acted out of "desperation and fear". The result was that he was now away from "the malign influences" of the other teenagers he had surrounded himself with, he added. Figures for national deaths from stabbings are hard to find. But 10 teenagers died in stabbings in London last year and 18 in 2023, the Metropolitan Police told AFP. Among this year's victims was 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa, who was stabbed to death in January on a London bus in broad daylight. His mother said he had been groomed by gangs. Nationally, excluding the northern city of Manchester, there were 50,973 offences involving a sharp instrument in 2023/24 compared to 36,000 in 2010/11 -- a 41 percent increase, according to official figures. har/jkb/phz
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Idris Elba: Our Knife Crime Crisis on BBC One review: a fearless look at a harrowing subject
When Idris Elba speaks, people listen. In January 2024, he kicked off the New Year with a protest outside Parliament. His subject of choice? Knife crime. Shortly after, the government announced that it would be closing a loophole in the law, and forbidding the sale of machetes and zombie knives. It's a rare triumph in this story of institutional failings – and one that Elba's clearly held close to his heart for a long time. Hence, this documentary, which follows the renowned actor around as he tackles the thorny subject of knife crime on our streets. It comes laden with sobering statistics. In the last decade, knife crime has doubled. Last year, an average of four people were stabbed to death every week. Most of the perpetrators – and victims – are teens. Many of those convicted for knife carrying are white: 69 per cent, in fact. 'It's a real indication of how much we have failed young people,' he says at one point, amid stories about 16 year-old Harry Pitman, who was stabbed to death on New Year's Eve at Primrose Hill, and Shawn Seesahai, 19, who was stabbed to death by two boys aged 12 in Wolverhampton. Elba meets some of them here, both victims and perpetrators: in one visit to Feltham, dubbed 'the most violent prison in the UK', he speaks to a 17-year-old, who started carrying a knife years previously and tells him, 'when I had a knife I felt like I could do anything, I felt like I was a god. Nobody could touch me.' As police officers and charity workers add later, it's a cycle most fall into at a young age and feel unable to break out of – with often deadly results. He's a good interviewer, and a good host: quiet, thoughtful and self-aware enough to make light of his celebrity. 'I'm an amplification device,' he says wryly at one point, despite a scene in which he visits a prison and is greeted by a wall of inmates chanting his name. More importantly, his fame doesn't get in the way of his ability to connect with his interviewees, even if it does grant him access to the corridors of power. In one particularly mind-boggling scene, the King is shown greeting Elba at the door to Buckingham Palace. Everybody, it seems, wants a bit of his stardust. But it's the people at the heart of the issues who cut through most effectively. We hear from a mother who lost her son to a ninja sword attack (even more heartbreakingly, his death was a result of mistaken identity); from Samir, who works for the St Giles Trust's SOS project, aimed at taking youths off the streets; from a young man whose case worker saved him from prison and introduced him to horse riding instead. Projects and initiatives to reduce this problem abound, but they keep running into problems: namely, money. The SOS Project, we learn, is in danger of having its funding cut off; a similar scheme in the West Midlands will run out of money in six months' time. Despite promises from Keir Starmer and his government – who crop up here to talk about how vital the issue is – the 2024 budget announced no new funding for youth services. Elba has solutions: one of them, to ban the sale of non-kitchen knives. Blunt the tips. Invest more in youth services and in prevention. 'There is hope, there's gotta be ways that this can be done,' he says at the end. Thank goodness he's here to fight the cause – even if our politicians don't want to. Streaming now on iPlayer
