Youth Engagement!

Wilson Chowdhry, Liaquat Ali, a Youth Worker and Rajeshri Chouhan (our new Green Party Activist for Seven Kings ward - at the official inaugration of the Youth Bus Service to Chadwell).

Many of you have complained about the lack of youth services locally and the increase in youth knife crime and antisocial behaviour. Yet last night after the extremely hard endaevour of Sgt Lowrie from the Chadwell Safer Neighbourhood Team, Liaquat Ali (Detached Youth Worker) and Wilson Chowdhry our lead Green Activist - Chadwell ward saw the introduction of the Redbridge Youth Bus.

The Redbridge Youth Bus is a service provided by our Youth Services Team and will provide DJ Workshops/ Gaming Consoles/ Internet Training/CV training/ Drugs and Alcohol counselling and Sexual Health counselling to young people from the ages of 11 - 16 every Thursday from 18:00 - 21:00. The location of this service will be on Capstan Close, which is at the end of Millhaven Close - itself off Grove Road.

Please do tell any parents with children of these ages that this service now exists till the end of December. If the attendance is strong enough the service which will expand in the summer months, to include organised sports and will move to Crucible Park. This again will be every Thursday from 18:00 - 21:00.

This is the culmination of a lot of work and although only 8 young people attended last night, we hope that through better communication, we can involve a much larger number - in probably the most adventurous youth engagement scheme our ward has had. Hopefully it will impact on the reduction of knife crime in our community, where we have suffered 3 incidents over the last 2 weeks.