School children help tackle anti-social behaviour in Waltham Forest

by Yixiang Zeng

Local youngsters from an Olympic borough are working with the police to tackle anti-social behaviour and reduce the fear of crime.

The project Develop, part of London 2012's Changing Places Programme, was launched in Waltham Forest last month in preparation for the Olympics to make the community safe and pleasant.

Met Police Constable Jeff Wade, who works on the Olympic Safety and Security Programme, said: “Some areas are heavily painted by Graffiti, by removing this Graffiti from the wall it will make people feel our community is safer and nicer.

“In the meantime, we organise people to paint community art pieces such as landscape, like flowers.”

Groups of children from Rush Croft Sports College and Walthamstow School for Girls are teaming up with police officers and their teaching assistants.

The pupils from year nine and ten were given cameras and maps to photograph or film graffiti, broken windows and over-grown gardens as part of a task to identify black sports in their community area.

These photographs and footage will then be displayed and showed at a workshop at a later stage of the project.

Sean Reed, Assistant Head Teacher from Rush Croft Sports College said: “Our school children are quite enjoying taking part in these activities and they are learning to be active citizens taking care of the places where they live and study.”

The police added that it helps break the stereotypical image of associating young people with anti-social behaviour and knife/gun crime.

Waltham Forest Councillor Liaquat Ali, who is responsible for Children and Young People, said: “By getting young people involved in this kind of project, we make sure they take pride of their ownership.”

Apart from working with local youngsters as Develop's starting point, the project is also designed to involve other age groups at its later stages.

The next stage is a problem solving workshop and involves older members of the community working with the pupils to consider potential solutions to the concerns raised. Thereafter, the ideas will be put into practice.

At the final stage, an event is planned to bring all the schools together to showcase their ideas and discuss what they have been doing throughout the whole process.

According to PC Wade, the project might also be introduced to other Olympics host boroughs and then to other areas in the UK in partnership with local forces.