Community join forces to bring an end to violent youth crime in Wolverhampton

Fifty members of the community (including me) came together last Sunday following an interview on Hard Food Podcast urging Wolverhampton people to take a stand to end the surge of violent youth crime which has plagued the streets in recent months.

On 20th July, 24 year-old Dwaine Haughton was gunned down and later died in hospital, on 29th May 15 year old Keelan Wilson was stabbed to death in Merry Hill The community have been left with two questions, why and how do we stop this?

There are many factors as to the reasons why, and as bystanders who aren’t part of these communities it is easy to blame the police, the parents or even the areas that they live in. But, Ricky Jackson, a young entrepreneur, opened up discussions about why he thinks these incidents happened during a podcast run by two young men from Wolverhampton.

On the ‘Hard Food Podcast’ which is hosted by the manager of a Wolverhampton Caribbean Restaurant Daniel Simpson (Juice English) and his co-host, primary school teacher Adrian Grey (The Saxon King) they invited Ricky Jackson on to speak about his experiences and what he feels can be done to help the youth involved in these violent crimes.

Ricky, 27, spent much of his youth getting into trouble but things came to a head when, at 17, he witnessed 1 of his best friends get shot dead in front of him. At the same time, Ricky had his first child and a mixture of these two significant events in his life drove him to take a different path. He went to university and studied business management, following this he opened up a chain of businesses included a successful property renovation & development company.

Ricky spoke on the podcast and said, “these kind of violent crimes have always been happening in Wolverhampton, when we were kids we knew that there were stabbings and shootings all the time it’s just more prevalent now because we have social media and within 5 minutes of an incident happening we hear about it on Facebook”. Ricky says that what is happening now is nothing new for Wolverhampton but there are things that we can do to tackle this. Ricky spoke about the need to provide support for parents and families living in poverty, “with the lack of good role models in some of these young men’s lives, gangs or a life of crime can become attractive and give them a sense of belonging. We need to provide support for parents and children struggling to show them there are positive role models and positive paths in life they can take where they will feel a sense of belonging”.

Inspired by the response that he had to his interview on the podcast, Ricky felt empowered to do something, to bring the community together to look at how, as a collective, we could try and put an end to some of the issues that are driving youth of Wolverhampton to violent crime.

The event was hosted at Light House Cinema & Cafe Bar and saw 50 members of the community from various backgrounds: youth workers, ex criminals, Councillors, Critical Incident response team members, mentors etc. come together to throw around ideas of what they can do as a collective.

Following this, Ricky is alongside a few other launching a charity called ‘A4NB- Always 4ward Never Backwards’ where he hopes to provide a few services to work with the youth of Wolverhampton.

One of the initiatives he is hoping to launch under A4NB is called ‘5000 Role Models’. This initiative is a successful project which has been launched in Miami which provides mentors for young men in a variety of fields (trades, business etc.) and to qualify as a ‘Model of Excellence’ each entrepreneur commits to mentoring a youngster at risk in their chosen field. The project has been extremely instrumental in America in reducing violent youth crime and Ricky wants to bring it to Wolverhampton.

The charity will also look to provide the youths with advice and guidance in education and employment. For those looking to pursue a career in sports development, music and media or even have a passion for it they will again be looking to help with this.

Recognising that mental health is an issue within the community, they will be looking to work closely with other support networks with regards to this alongside mediation.

I also attended the event, I thought it was important to go along, as a Councillor but also as a ‘young person’ who cares about her community. Ricky and others insight in to what is going on in the streets which is driving some of these young people to violent crime (and in some situations death) is valued. It’s something that you almost can’t comprehend but hearing the stories and struggles of some of the young men who are starting up A4NB makes it very real. I think that what Ricky and the other men are trying to achieve is a brilliant community led initiative and I am interested in hearing how projects such as 5000 role models develop.