The Nottingham Unity Football and Education Programme has won the
2009 BBC Power of Sport Award, supported by Sport England, for
the East Midlands.
The Nottingham Unity Football and Education
Programme was set up by Morris Samuels who felt that he had to do
something for the community to put an end to gang rivalry after the
death of an innocent 14 year old girl. In 2004, Danielle Beccan was
shot dead by two men from a rival area after walking home from
Nottingham’s famous Goose Fair. It was a random shooting.
The Unity programme is a football project that
engages young people from the age of 16-25 from the three rival
gang areas in Nottingham (Radford, St Ann’s, and the Meadows). The
aim is to bring young people from different areas together through
the power of football. Players have to wear black trousers
and a black shirt as a mark of respect to people who have been
killed in gang violence.
Every game is played on semi professional
pitches and against semi professional or professional clubs, but
before each game, the players must attend a workshop aimed at
helping to tackle issues that affect the area. The workshops
include gun crime, drug awareness, gang affiliated awareness,
Connexions careers advice and army careers advice.
The programme provides access to volunteering,
training and employment opportunities. The programme also
offers one-to-one mentoring to young people to help with issues
such as housing, benefits and court dates.
The programme aims to help build bridges
between three rival areas as well as preventing the escalation of
territorialism and the promotion of good citizenship throughout the
region. They aim to achieve this by directly tackling gang
warfare, anti-social behaviour and to also encourage young people
into playing sport, enrolling in college / training courses and
seeking employment.
Since the programme began, Nottingham has seen
vast improvements within the community. Violence has been greatly
reduced since the Unity programme was launched in 2006, so much so
that Nottingham is no longer registered as one of the UK’s top 10
cities for gun crime.
Over 30 young people who have completed their
courses and in addition, the project can boast a number of success
stories including:
- Three young people that have come through the project are now
working full time for the Unity programme as mentors/youth
workers
- Seven of the young people currently work for Catch 22, the
organisation that delivers the programme
- A further 10 young people are now fully-qualified referees and
over 40 youngsters have gone onto play semi professional
football.
David Boafo has come through the project and
become a mentor. He said:
“During my two to three years with Unity, I
have gained more qualifications and accreditations then I did in 11
years at school.”
All the great work will not end there as the founders of
Unity are already planning a new scheme called Junior Unity, which
will cater for 10-16 year olds across Nottingham and bring them
together to prevent postcode warfare from an early age. The
programme will promote good citizenship and the importance of
staying in full time education. The senior members of Unity who
have come through the project will mentor the juniors.