Citizenship Foundation: educating for effective citizenship

Gladesmore Community School

'Value Life: We are the Future'

Value Life are a group of students from Gladesmore Community School who campaign against gun crime, a terrifying issue in Haringey, the area they live in.

Project started: Jul 2004

Value Life originally trained with Youth Act in July 2004. Two years on, their campaign has grown from strength to strength they have delivered workshops and assemblies to schools, the local community and national audiences and won numerous awards.However, their biggest success has been to take their message to the streets through their annual Peace marches:

"In 2004 people of all ages and backgrounds joined us to march through the streets of Tottenham . It was a great success, even the people having their lunch in the local cafes started to cheer for us!"

In 2005, 500 people joined the second march and on 19th July 2006 the group plan to take to the streets again. This time they will be joined by young people from through out Haringey as the march passes by each school.

After winning a Home Office Respect award in 2005 the group decided to invest some of their award money in getting more young people in Haringey involved in the campaign. They organised a round table debate inviting local secondary and primary schools and offered a small budget to local schools so together they can come up with strategies to tackle gun crime, raise awareness and use marches and actions to lobby further support.

They also have plans to create a short film documenting their campaign work to be distributed amongst young people and local schools. In June 2006 the group spoke at a national conference in Oxford on gun and knife crime.

The Value Life group have shown great commitment, passion and enthusiasm for their campaign:

What I most enjoy about being part of the Value Life Gun Crime Campaign is the satisfaction we get as a group knowing we have raised awareness and done something to make a difference. It's some times difficult having to deal with negative comments, like people saying it would never work , but weve proved them wrong!

Our actions have given those people who have been affected by gun crime hope because now there are people speaking out against it.

Yasemin.

Take a look at their achievements:

*Created and circulated a petition against gun crime aimed at parents and community(hundreds signed).

*Organised three anti-gun crime marches through Tottenham.

*Ran assemblies addressing the whole school to spread awareness and recruit allies.

*Winners of a Wavemakers Award in 2005

*Finalists in the Deutsche Bank Spotlights Awards 2005

*Won Home Office Respect Award 2005

*Gun crime has been incorporated into the school curriculum thanks to the Value Life campaign

*OFSTED were very impressed by the project grading active Citizenship at the school as above average, an excellent curriculum and teaching.

*Created corridor displays about the anti-gun project.

*Designed and distributed 400 Value Life T-Shirts.

*Worked with PC Colin Moorhouse, (Safer Schools Partnership) Co-ordinator of One Shot, Theatre-in-Education anti-gun crime project in Haringey schools

*Boys have written an anti-gun crime song, and made a CD.

*Visited Haringey schools and presented in assemblies to recruit allies.

*Attended Safer Schools Partnership conference for young people in Haringey, Hackney and Waltham Forest.

*Organised a local round table on gun and knife crime with local primary and secondary schools setting up a local partnership to address the issue together.

*When Nottingham girl (14 year-old Danielle Beccan) was shot, Years 7 11 students sent postcards to her family.

National Gun and Knife Crime Conference Oxford June 2006

In June 2006 the Value Life group were invited to speak and participate at a national conference on gun and knife crime in Oxford.

Attended by a range of organisations, schools and colleges, the group and participants addressed the question:

What do YOU want to do to change gun crime?

Bianca and Nathan, two members of the Value Life group report:

"At the conference we joined 10-15 groups from very different backgrounds. We gave a Youth Act presentation about our campaign and lots of people were interested in what we had to say and in finding out how we run our campaign. We also spent time with participants creating a timeline recording all the major stories and personal events related to gun crime over the past 20 years and discussing ways of stopping gun crime in our local communities." Bianca

"One of the best things about the conference was meeting people from different groups and sharing ideas. I met a guy from Manchester, he talked about how the frequent shootings in the city has made some people call it "Gunchester". We went to workshops about gun crime which were great to get good contacts and ideas from other youth groups."

"On 19th July we're organising our third Peace March through Haringey. We've just held our Round Table event with 7 local schools and we're planning to take some workshops into primary schools, gun crime is a serious issue and you have to start by teaching people from a young age about what they can do about it."

"Being part of the Value Life campaign has made me really feel proud to be part of something great, I know now how to help people and I'm more considerate."

Nathan.