Agenda 32 (Spring 2008).
Youth Empowerment
Michaela Ryan, ROTA Volunteer
As an 18 year old female and member of Building Bridges Project Team, set up by ROTA to look at London’s gun, gang and knife culture, I have experienced first hand the impact and benefits of being involved and given ownership of research. Prior to this experience I always believed that young people should be given a voice, and that their opinions really mattered, but I couldn’t put my finger on why - or how these opinions should be gathered. Being involved in a youth led and youth owned project has given me those answers.
Gun, gang and knife 'culture' affects everybody. The impact is not exclusive to any age group and requires a concern and response from society en masse. However, when it is talked about in the media, and often politically, it is us as young people who feel the strain, the responsibility and the consequences greatest. Furthermore, the fear that this creates is felt by us directly on a daily basis - as we travel to and from school, go out at night etc. We do make up the statistics of those killed, the victims are getting younger. We are more likely to be stop and searched by the police and over-policed in other ways as a result of all of the above. To quote we often feel 'over-policed and under-protected'.
Whether this feeling reflects the reality or not is not what is important. The fact that we do fear, the fact that death and fear of attack is a general part of our lives is what is important. As the ‘children’ of our society we seem to straddle between having limited rights and powers – from the obvious examples of not having the vote, to being described as items of clothing - ‘hoodie’ to more recent developments of being dispersed from shop corners using...
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