When the rioting is over, what practical things can we do to make a difference?

[CinnabarRed]

I'm white, middle class and live very comfortably in the home counties. I work in a well paid job in the city, I went to university. I have had every opportunity life has to offer, and I have been incredibly lucky.

I have no idea what it's like to be a young black man growing up in Tottenham, or Peckham, or any of the places affected by the riots. I have no idea how it feels to grow up with no prospects, or role models, or viable alternatives.

I pay my taxes, but it doesn't feel enough. It isn't enough.

What, who and where can I/should I help? Volunteer? Support? Is it best to give of my expertise or to mentor or to help at schools? Financial assistance? Get my city firm involved in a project somewhere?

No there isn't an excuse, but we need to do something, no? We can't afford more prisons, not for that amount of people.

Prevention is so much better than cure! If we can find a way to get into these families and help them when the children are really young, we could break this awful cycle of poverty & social exclusion.

These two organisations are the best I know for actual intervention because of the way they are run. So many voluntary organisations have a structure that means only the people the organisers reach, get involved.

These two ensure that the most vulnerable children are reached.

www.raceequalityfoundation.org.uk/our-work/strengthening-families-strengthening-communities

www.home-start.org.uk/support_tools/get_involved/volunteer

If anyone else has opinions on what has happened, feel free to offer other organisations that offer long-term solutions for supporting disenfranchised families and vulnerable children.

I have worked in several schools which run reading schemes where people from nearby offices are given an extra bit of lunch hour once a week so they can go to local inner city primary schools and read/play literacy or maths games with the children. This benefits the children both because there is a measurable improvement in their literacy and maths levels and also because they have a role model from outside their family (someone who has a job and reliably turns up every week when they say they are going to). It is a tiny commitment for the adult that makes a really big difference for the child. Ask at your workplace! Big finance companies and insurance companies are often involved in these schemes. If your work doesn't run one then set one up!

Thank you for starting this thread.

I have just looked at the homestart link and will be contacting them re volunteering today.

I've been wondering the same thing. The problem goes deeper than lack of policing etc, and this article in the Independent by Camila Batmanghelidjh goes some way to explaining what is going on and more importantly how it might be fixed. She is the founder of Kids Company and The Place To Be, both charities sound like good ones to get involved with.

Many of the organisations have had funding cut, and never had much to begin with. These are a lifeline for children. Nobody's saying what they did wasn't wrong, this thread is about what you can do to help kids so they don't grow up to think that this is acceptable behaviour.

www.csv.org.uk/volunteering/mentoring-befriending/young-people

Oh that's great Nora - Home-start aren't very good at promoting themselves, they just get on with the work, so it's great to be able to publicise their work. There is also a fairly high turnover of volunteers as most are women with young children who then go back to work.

Foster a teenage mother and her baby? Social Services are always desperate for mother and baby placements, even when they have more money.

Are there mentoring schemes for girls?

Great thread, well done OP.

Great thread.

It is good to see that the tide seems to be turning from the call for rubber bullets and water canon to what is wrong and what can the individual do to help.

I was just about to link to the blog that GentleOtter quoted, it is very good.

It is shocking, the statistic that 13 to 20% of children leave school with NO qualifications. And it is good to think about ways to prevent this.

Alistair Campbell quoted a tweet saying ".. the Right say Lock them up, the Left ask Why?". I think we should do both.

Perhaps MNHQ could get in touch with Camila Batmanghelidjh and ask her if there is a way to help. Could we perhaps have her on for a webchat?

I agree, mmelindor.

Another shocking statistic I heard yesterday There are 600,000 under 24 yr olds who are unemployed and have never been in employment, even for a day.

SOVA is a good charity for mentoring with young people and ex-offenders. They have a few different projects.

A web chat with Camila Batmanghelidjh would be fantastic!

Here is the link for SOVA - www.sova.org.uk/projectList.php?title=Projects

Another thought - providing work experience placements in your business or maybe apprenticeships?

or getting them to clean up the damage and carnage that they have created? How about that?

Great idea sausages, how about you organising it then? Go ahead, rally them round, see if you can do what their parents can't.

I agree, that's great that you're going to do that Sausages. Nothing worse than people getting all vocal but doing nowt.

Sausages, this is the perfect opportunity to show these kids how to be a decent honourable human being. Leading by example is usually the best way.

Let's think of some ideas to make a difference.

My plan at the moment is to volunteer for HomeStart locally while I'm on maternity leave, and then mentoring and Kidd Company once I go back to work. Have also emailed our managing partner to encourage the firm to get involved. But I'm still open to suggestions!

Thanks to everyone for ideas.

That's fantastic CinnabarRed, it's so much better to do something than to just complain. Homestart do something that social services used to do, but no longer have the time to.

Homestart work is very demanding and takes you to places you would normally never go, psychologically as well as geographically but it will enrich your life.

Homestart? mentoring? bollox!!
The riots are caused by an unequal and unfair society.Create an underclass by creating poverty,Mass unemployment, cuts in public services and police harassment ,then blame people for getting angry!
What political party really supports the under class and the working class now? Certainly not new Labour.
Give young people a job worth having and opportunities to make a better life for themselves.
We have seen riots in Greece, Spain and other European countries in the past year