Spoon Community Projects 39
Spoon and the Big Society
The fires have been put out, the detritus swept away and approximately 1,600 people have been arrested with the promise of more to come. Many of the streets that once resembled war zones soon reopened for business and one might have been forgiven for thinking everything is back to normal.
In the wake of the August riots across the UK, Wooden Spoon Development Director for Community Projects, Jai Purewal looks at the ‘septimana horribilies’ and at what needs to be done to prevent a repeat of the unprecedented violence that erupted on our streets and calls for greater collaboration between youth agencies and a focus on sustained behaviour change in respective project participants, as the first steps to addressing some of the most deeply entrenched social issues facing society today.
What happened has been well documented across all media. In the immediate hours after the riots started, the party line was that, ‘there is no excuse for such wanton criminality.’ I don’t think most people would challenge this argument (perhaps even a proportion of the protagonists themselves) however it is clear
that the problems derive from the thick soup of social degradation affecting some of the most deprived areas of the UK. Far from random, the pattern of rioting centered on areas affected by social issues such as: high levels of unemployment, crime, single- parent families, social housing and poor education. In an ideal world one would apply the proverbial hand – brake and stop time to rebuild our communities to provide safe, nurturing environments for our young people to grow up as model citizens. Unfortunately this cornucopia does not exist and we are faced with a reality that is extremely finely balanced and evidently volatile. The vast majority of those arrested during the riots were males in their early 20s, the youngest aged only 11 years old. In the courts the startling absence of the parents of the accused was lambasted. This clearly
demonstrates the need for community sports programmes to engage with young people, to provide them with direction, discipline and something to look forward to in order to sign post them on to more positive outcomes in life. In the last edition of Spoonews we introduced the Game On! programme which aims to engage NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) young people aged between 16 and 19 years old through rugby, before supporting them through accredited learning and on to a range of employment, further education, training (including apprenticeships), volunteering and continued sporting opportunities.
For more information on the Game On! programme, visit
www.woodenspoon.com
www.woodenspoon.com Autumn 2011 Spoonews
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