COACH - Community Leadership
This programme targets young people aged 17 to 25 years 'at risk' of gang membership or past gang membership and challenges them to become positive leaders in their communities. The aim is to reduce gang membership, knife crime and empower unemployed young people to become positive role models and potential leaders in their community.
Over a 12 month period each participant is expected to take part in three outward bound adventure-training weekends (or one week and one weekend) and 6 evening workshops covering self-leadership, leading others, coaching skills and
basic leadership skills.
In Hackney several Community Leaders participated in the Love is a Verb courses.
In addition, each participant is expected to meet with a coach every month throughout the programme. We measure how the young adult has resisted gang membership, found full-time employment or training and/or begun to volunteer in his/her local community.
Love is a Verb developed in the context of 10 years work on the Worlds End Estate and in working alongside others on the Ferrier estate (Greenwich), and the Alton estate (Roehampton), the Andover Estate (Islington) and in Hackney. The key issue has been to give local people, who live, work or gather there, what they need to be part of the change needed in their communities.
In addition to two courses planned in London, we have been approached by leaders in Bristol and Oxford and have agreed to work with them in running Love is a Verb there from October 2007.