International Day of Peace: What is it? And how can it help to prevent Youth Crime and Gang Violence?

What is Peace Day?

International Day of Peace, also known as World Peace Day, is celebrated every year on 21st September. The United Nations General Assembly came together in 1981 to discuss the rise in violence and crime within the world. The result? A declaration of a day devoted to “strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and people.”

The whole purpose of International Day of Peace is to strengthen the ideals of peace, by completing 24 hours of non-violence across the Globe. After a very difficult year for millions of people all over the world, the need for peace is more important now than ever.

The pandemic has affected many people in many different ways; however, it has affected the underprivileged and marginalized groups the hardest, according to The United Nations. Thus, being a factor associated with the rise of youth crime and gang violence.

This is why it is so important for us to continue to speak up, educate and create safe spaces for our young people to develop in. So that we can support the social, emotional and positive well-being of our young people and inspire them to be the best they can be, especially those who experience marginalisation and are growing up amongst deprivation.

It is equally important that we as the community and practitioners around them have the right support, training infrastructures so that we can provide our young people with the best possible support. Check out www.actcic.org.uk/gangscourse/ for more information on how ACT CIC assists communities and practitioners with the right training.

ACT CIC also uses Peace Day to help promote peacebuilding within our local communities through initiatives that help prevent youth violence, criminality and exploitation through our courses, programmes, events and hosting talks, to educate young people, the community and practitioners, as well as inspiring our young people to fulfil their infinite potential.

How do we celebrate Peace Day?

Members of our Activating Creative Talent (ACT) team have been personally affected due to the loss of loved ones due to Knife Crime. The outcome of team meetings in 2014 resulted in ACT CIC launching the Knife Awareness Project (KAP).

Knife Awareness Project (KAP)?

The focus on this project is to address the impacts of knife crime. Visiting many schools across Birmingham, hosting assemblies for secondary school children aged 14 and above. We raise awareness of the impacts of knife crime and give advice of what to do if ever faced with knife crime as well as giving some basic legal insights and first aid advice. As a team, we really started to understand just how big and wide-reaching knife crime and its impact was a problem. When we asked the children (with their teachers looking) if they have ever known someone carrying a knife, about 15 % of the children in the room hold their hands up, when we ask teachers to look away and ask the same question again without the prying eyes of their teachers 80-90% of their hands would always go up and this remained consistent across all the schools we attended. Now this isn’t scientific of course but it just goes to show that 80% of those children did not trust their teachers and have some concerns about knife carrying and youth violence.

Current news at the time regularly splashed knife crime incidents across the newspapers, young children having a lucky escape while a few lost their lives. Media presenting grieving families, friends, parents of the children distraught and appealing for change is all too much.

We met with Alison Cope, the mother of Depzman who sadly lost his life on 21th, September 2013 while he was attending his friend’s Kyle Sheehan’s fundraiser event, who was murdered on the same day exactly 1 year before on 21, sept 2012. This prompted us to look at the irony of International Peace Day, which hardly goes noticed within our communities, it’s in everybody’s calendars and being celebrated the world over, but on our streets, in our communities its anxiety, fear and violence that reigns and is forcing more and more young people to get caught up in a culture of violence, which includes carry knives, simply because they no longer feel safe, fear of attack, reprisals and the cycle of violence continues.

We decided we wanted to do something about this by creating more spaces to help young people address their fears and anxiety by giving them a positive platform enabling them to showcase their talents. We believe that the arts can be used as therapeutic spaces to help relieve young people of their fears and anxieties, whilst giving them opportunities to have fun, enjoy life and shine. In 2014 we helped Joshua Riberia’s Mom commemorate the memory of her son and other young people who had lost their lives to knife crime, taking over the REP theatre on 21st September for a Peace Day event.

We called it the Peace ACT.

We aimed to: Raise the awareness of International Day of Peace and the Peacebuilders within our communities that were working everyday like ourselves to prevent and reduce acts of violence, and support, develop & enable young people, thereby;

Preventing and reduce acts of violence
Increase acts of Peace.

We hosted 2 stages with musicians and local lyrical artists, as well as invited various social action and career organisations that could engage and offer opportunities to young people.

We then hosted another follow up event in Sheffield and again in Birmingham in September 2015. A shift in focus and due to the lack of human and financial resources meant that we no longer were in the position to run the large events however annually we (ACT CIC) have always been working towards the greater goals of helping the community to better respond to youth violence through organising and coordinating our efforts as of a collective and raising awareness of the peace builders within our communities.

On 21st September 2016 ACT launched our social and emotional development programmes in schools aiming to reduce youth violence. In September 2017 we launched the Peace ACT mapping exercise, carrying out research and mapping many of the peacebuilders and community organisations across the West Midlands that we were working towards preventing youth violence. The aim was to create a directory for people in the community to easily access support from organisations within their local communities.

We later combined our directory with the Police Crime Commissioners office and BVSC, which became the Youth map funded though the Violence Reduction Unit. See our previous blog https://www.actcic.org.uk/the-youth-map-launch/ for more information.

In 2018 we began training 50 young people as Peace Ambassadors in their Communities, who could act as peer advocates within their schools. In September 2019 we Relaunched the Working with gangs and Youth Violence Level 3 Courses for the peacebuilders, community activists, and other frontline practitioners with the only accredited course within the UK, creating specialist youth violence practitioners, with the right knowledge and skills to respond to the epidemic of violence plaguing our communities.

In September 2020 we launched our Online platform so we can offer these courses to people across the UK. Throughout the years, we have always celebrated Peace Day in many different ways. This year, to celebrate Peace Day, we are gathering more sector experts to talk about peacebuilding, community resilience and how we deal with the trauma of youth violence in our communities. On the day we will be speaking to various community organisations who are on the frontlines of building peace, come and find out who they are, what they have been doing and their future plans towards bringing about peace within our communities. (Link is below)

Also, in honour of International Day of Peace, we are offering a £300 discount on our OCN Level 3 Youth and Gang Violence course until 30th September.

The course is perfect for;