The Be Safe Project - Educating young people that knives cost lives

 

The Be Safe workshops originated in the London Borough of Newham in 1998 and
were the brainchild of David Morris, Kevin Everard & John Harding.

 Working as police officers they had noticed a marked increase in the number of young people carrying and using knives on the street.

Having left the police to start their own personal safety consultancy, Kevin & David devised the first weapons awareness sessions, called Knife Talk. This was in response to concerns from the local magistrates about the number of young offenders that were armed.
 

             

 

In 2005 Be Safe opened a charitable subsidiary company,

The Be Safe Project, in order to take the workshops to those groups that were unable to fund the cost themselves.

These sessions were so successful that everyone who saw them wanted to be able to get the input for their young people.

Newham Youth Offending Team ( headed by Peter Nicholson ), evaluated the effect on persistent knife offenders and found that after the sessions, only 7.8% re-offended and of those only 1.7% had re-offended with a knife.

 

              

 

Bob Goldsmith, one
of Be Safe’s senior
trainers, working
with a group in
Newham.

 

 

 

 

Young people are
asked to look at
some of the effects
of real life violence
on the human body.

 

 

 

 

 

One of our flagship projects has been the Leeds Weapons Awareness Programme.

Be Safe were approached by John Birkenshaw, the head of Leeds Community Safety, to provide our workshops for all senior school age children within Leeds.

 

 

Be Safe have now trained over 100 trainers from Education, Youth Services, Street Wardens and West Yorkshire Police, to ensure that the workshops are available to all.