AMATEURS
How your boxing club can help to reduce violence in your community
BOXING, we know, is a tough, intense and at times risky combat sport. But it’s not an act of violence. It is controlled, regulated and takes place both under a set of rules and an understanding of the conduct required. The sport in fact helps reduce violence. Not in isolation but as a part of an overall programme it can play a role. That is the real, observable experience of the charity Fight For Peace. There are five pillars to the Fight For Peace method; training in boxing or combat sport, education, employability, support services and leadership.
James Baderman, their head of programmes, explained, “So young people don’t come in and just do sport. They come in because they want to do combat sports but then we layer all of those different activities around the sport. So the public health approach is about being holistic, it’s about targeting those who are living in communities that have difficulties with violence but who will probably never get involved, so having preventative measures. It’s about working with those who face multiple risk factors, that’s what we would call intervention approaches and then there are rehabilitation approaches for those who are heavily involved and they’re much more intensive and complicated.”
Their mission is to reduce youth violence. “It’s to help young people that are involved in or affected by youth violence to steer clear of that, live happy and secure lives. But our approach is that youth violence is a manifestation of many different and complicated issues. So to work on youth violence you need to work on education and employability and personal development issues and leadership issues and all of that sort of thing. So yes, our mission is all about youth violence. But we’re not running singular programmes that go: ‘do not pick up a knife.’ We’re saying what’s going on in that young person’s life more broadly that’s led them to this situation? How can we develop opportunities for them? How can we unlock potential in them that will mean that they don’t get involved with that particular behaviour?” Baderman said. “So it’s very important to have somewhere for them to go and a diversionary activity [for which boxing is ideal] that occupies them. But that’s the start. That’s the platform on which you build.”
“Combat sport delivered in a certain way, within certain values frameworks and alongside other services has a role to play,” he added. “If you walk into a club where it’s got inclusive values, it’s safe, young people are valued and they have an understanding of their broad needs and they have other elements of the project, like education and personal development, then you’re on to something really strong.”
The Fight For Peace method works and they have the evidence to prove it. As well as their base in London the charity has a network of partners, gyms, clubs or organisations that do similar work. With this ‘Fight For Peace Alliance’ the charity shares its methods and provides training so that clubs can do this kind of social work and fundraising on a more formal basis. Fight For Peace has now received a substantial grant from the Big Lottery Fund, to the tune of £2.3 million over three years, to find existing clubs to join their network of partners and expanding the training and development of programmes they can provide. “All of that money is focused on sharing the methodology,” Baderman says. “It’s about us growing and strengthening and scaling the programming via the network.”
They’re looking in particular to find partners in regions where they don’t already have a presence. “The first element is to grow it to all corners of the UK more comprehensively, so we’ll find between five and 10 partners in Scotland and between five and 10 partners in Wales and then we’ll do one more cohort of any pockets in the UK we haven’t got good coverage. So it will enable us to get full coverage around the UK and grow by about 25 new alliance members. There’s a strengthen element which is about saying we’ve got these other 35 or so existing partners around the UK and we’ve trained them over the course of a year and we don’t want to stop at that point we want to give them ³
more support,” James said. “Critically in two areas, one is technical support to become a more solid and sustainable organisation in difficult economic times. So helping them with fundraising, financial management, governance structures, all of that that sits behind the work that everyone does. So that’s one element of that. The other is how can they work more effectively with young people that are most at risk of involvement in violence. So helping to developing specific outreach strategies for those at risk young people, good partnership strategies so they’re not doing everything themselves but linking in with other services, programming that’s particularly designed to work with those at risk young people.”
“Then we’ve got this third layer which is about financing five of our existing organisations over two years to deliver our alternative education pathways,” he continued. “For 16-25 year olds who struggle to get back into education for various reasons, we provide them with accelerated learning in maths and English and then a vocational qualification often in sports. We will be channelling money to five organisations to provide them with training and the funds to deliver that programme for two years in their locations [so] we’re also now bringing money to those organisations that perhaps they would struggle to raise themselves.
“It’s growing the alliance, strengthening the ones we’ve already got and it’s replicating our education programme.”
Organisations who would like to be involved in this kind of work can get in touch with Fight For Peace. “We are looking broadly for two types of organisations, one is combat sports organisations who have always done this kind of work but probably haven’t formally. So the ethic is there and the belief in the power of the sports is there. What we can help them do is to add the other services that you require to work with at risk young people alongside their sports,” Baderman said. “The other group is youth service organisations that have always worked with those young people but think that by bringing in the sports they can be more attractive to those young people and strengthen their services.” For clubs interested in joining this network:
Applications for organisations who want to join the Fight for Peace Alliance will be opening shortly. Applications will be open to organisations from across the UK, with the first group of organisations being selected from Scotland.
Organisations wishing to join should be operating in low income communities with substantial barriers to socio-economic inclusion and high levels of violence involving or affecting young people. Organisations must have operated for a minimum of two years, be sustainable and be committed to developing services that combine boxing and martial arts with personal development to support young people. Organisations can include NGOS, schools, youth-offender programmes, sports clubs and other types of organisations and do not need to already offer boxing and martial arts.
Organisations interested in becoming part of the Fight for Peace Alliance should contact the Fight for Peace Alliance Programme Manager, Ana Vacas at ana. vacas@fightforpeace.net or 0207 474 0054.