We’re proud to announce that we’ll be further supporting young people in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham as part of the Winning Harts consortium, funded as part of the Mayor of London’s £14.5m investment in local communities through the MyEnds programme.
Led by the West Ham United Foundation, and working alongside Youth League UK, Be Heard as One, and Box Up Crime, we’ll be preventing Serious Youth Violence on the Harts Lane Estate in Barking.
The Winning Harts consortium has received £800,000 in funding from the MyEnds programme, run by London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU). The consortium will be working closely in partnership with the VRU, local services, and the community to deliver a response that is uniquely tailored to the issues that young people and residents in this area face on a daily basis.
LifeLine’s work on London estates started in 2019 with our SW!TCH Communities programme launching on a new estate with an entrenched youth violence issue. Due to the success of this work, we have now delivered the programme across six different estates throughout East London and we are pleased to now be responding to the needs of the Harts Lane Estate in Barking. Working with the VRU and our these amazing partners will allow us to take the programme to further heights.
I am always excited about helping local people become agents for change in their communities. Through this programme, we will be able to help the residents and young people become the driving force for the changes they want to see on their estate.
Nathan Singleton
CEO, LifeLine Projects
LifeLine will be contributing across three key areas:
First, we’ll be managing a local grants scheme, offering £40,000 over the next two years to local grassroots organisations and community and young people-led projects working directly on the estate as well as in the wider community for the benefit of young people.
Next, we’ll be leading on community outreach to local residents and organisations, with the aim of bringing the community together to further shape a response to local issues that truly meets their needs. Initiatives put forward by the community can then be further supported by funding from the grants scheme.
Finally, we’ll form part of a wider set of activities offered to young people in the area, with two of our signature positive activity sessions delivered per week by our SW!TCH team.
We’re grateful for the support from the Mayor of London, VRU and our local networks. The issues involved in violence are multi-faceted and so to be able to establish a collaborative consortium that will be united and agile in unpicking those complexities is extremely valuable.
Together we’re well positioned to harness our community connection, local insight, grassroots initiatives, skills and experience, to deliver bespoke interventions for local need.
Joseph Lyons
CEO, West Ham United Foundation
The MyEnds programme brings networks of local people together to deliver meaningful change. Evidence shows that a community-led approach, by those who know their area and its challenges best, is the most effective way to prevent violence. MyEnds provides communities with the tools and resources to deliver their own prevention measures, including support networks for parents and carers, after-school activities, youth work in neighbourhoods and youth clubs, as well as sport, music, arts and drama activities.
I have always been clear that we will never be able to arrest our way out of violence, which is driven by poverty, deprivation and lack of opportunity.
This major City Hall funding boost will help my Violence Reduction Unit expand its MyEnds programme across London and help communities to target interventions through youth work, mentoring and after-school activities, in the neighbourhoods in greatest need of support.
Sadiq Khan
Mayor of London
