GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

or saw on the TV fairly recently, I think it was only a couple of weeks ago. I

always wake up to the radio in the morning, to the news and as I came out of

my woozy sort of sleep this is what I heard. The Commons Digital Culture

Media and Sports Committee said that sporting and cultural activities are being

overlooked by ministers in favour of arresting and imprisoning young people

and should be harnessed to help fight knife crime and gun violence. Even in

my kind of slightly dozy state, I thought, “Genius! Nobody would have thought

of that, would they?” Keep people active and engaged and it might actually

impact on knife crime, gang affiliation. I am sure, as someone who has

devoted so much of his life to promoting and providing positive interventions to

young people across all areas of sport and education, our next speaker must

have been tearing his hair out when he read those particular headlines.

A little bit about our next speaker. It gives me great pleasure to be able to

introduce him, because we first met some years ago and we have been having

conversations for quite some time and we have been trying to get some kind of

synergy and some kind of connection between the work that we do and the

work that he does and the platform of the GFTU, I think, is the perfect platform

for that connection to be made successfully. Our next speaker is a former

British athlete. During a distinguished sporting career he was the World

Heavyweight Karate Champion and World Team Karate Champion and won

more than 50 national and international titles. He was honoured in 1995 in the

Queen’s New Year’s Honours List with an MBE for his services to sport. His

services run way, way beyond that, I can assure you. He is a leading youth

activist and expert in sports development and politics and has a passionate

interest in the social and human development of young people and

communities. He is the founder and Executive Chair of the Youth Charter, a

UK based international charity and United Nations non-governmental

organisation that uses the ethics of sport and artistic excellence to tackle the

problems of educational nonattainment, health and equality, antisocial

behaviour and crime in some of the UK’s most troubled communities. He is

also Chair of Governors of the University of East London.

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