Help Head Held High reduce youth crime in London.

Head Held High is a social enterprise leading highly motivational and interactive workshops to empower young people at risk of exclusion, affiliated with criminal activity, vulnerable adults, the unemployed, and the elderly. Our objective is to aim to help people become a true product of themselves and not their environment, past, or limiting self-beliefs.

We run "The Best You" behaviour-change programme in partnership with the anti-knife crime charity "The Ben Kinsella Trust" to support young people maintain their place in mainstream schools, transforming anti-social behaviour and improving employability opportunities.

The pandemic has been rough, and we know that a lot of London’s young people have had a difficult time. In 2021 alone, 30 teenagers lost their lives to knife crime in London. Too many young people end up excluded from school and at risk of grooming by gangs. We need to act.

The Best You programme aims to directly reduce youth violence and exclusions from school, whilst educating young people on the dangers of knife crime and its impact on their community. We know our courses make a difference. Working together with the anti-knife crime charity Ben Kinsella Trust we found that 85% of our young people said they would no longer carry a knife after our intervention.

Our course is a behavioural change programme. We empower participants with confidence and skills so that they feel positive about themselves and their ability to succeed in life. Participants learn to identify their unique strengths, improve their ability to manage emotions, tap into resilience and plan for the future. Motivational coaches are there to help our young people with their expertise. They are supported with regular telephone mentoring throughout the course.

The programme is conducted over six weeks and is delivered through weekly 90-minute group workshops. Workshops are fun and interactive. Week-to-week, participants make significant changes that bring huge benefits in life.

Young people get a certificate of achievement and a character reference to help them with their next steps in life.

£20,000 would help secure the future of our programme and ensure we are reaching more young people. The money would provide targeted support for 60 at-risk young people, help keep them in school, improve their wellbeing and mental health and improve their job opportunities.

The money goes directly towards:

The staff time from The Ben Kinsella Trust and Head Held High to empower and support our young people

Travel, refreshments and materials for the course.

Your donation can make a real difference in helping young people find the right start in life. Whether that’s £10, £50 or £100. Every contribution takes us one step closer to being able to reach more young people and provide the interventions we all know make a massive difference. At a time when government funding has been reduced for programmes like this, community support makes such a massive difference.

We’re really proud of the testimony from our young people and our teachers. They tell us how much of a positive change our courses make, and how much of a desperate need there is for courses like this in London.

Thank you from everyone at Head Held High.