Our Mission
In Jodie’s honour, the Jodie Chesney Foundation will develop and provide prevention, intervention, education and support to parents, young people and those that may not engage in mainstream support, by promoting the reduction and long-term eradication of fatal violence by Knives and to relieve the victims of the effects of violence within the community.
Our Current Project – ‘Lost Hours: Street Level’
This project will involve implementing part of our Prevention strategy and will work in conjunction with Barking and Dagenham Council, supported by Its leader Cllr Darren Rodwell. The project will work in conjunction with Barking and Dagenham’s ‘Lost Hours’ campaign which I was involved in personally. Lost Hours video clip: Lost Hours: It’s time you knew where your kids are…before it’s too late
Young people are most likely to be admitted to hospital for a stab wound between 15:00 and 18:00, traditional youth work services focus on later times, that is why JCF’s work is so important.
To begin with we will recruit 3 part time youth workers along with management support that will be dedicated to working in specific local areas at certain times (15.00 to 18.00) The aim is to build strong relationships with young people and their parents, working closely with them on attempting to change the current culture of youth crime that includes attacking people with knives, and instead directing them onto positive diversionary projects.
To enable us to run this project we will initially require an estimated £70k of funding which will pay for workers, management costs and safety equipment for staff and volunteers. This project will initially be for a 6-month period and we will be monitoring youth violence alongside the Barking and Dagenham Community Safety Partnership to ensure we are targeting the right areas and gathering the right information.
Unfortunately Barking and Dagenham council (as with many local authorities) cannot fund this specific project as funding is not available and is sparse, especially during the pandemic however they are supporting us with the costly recruitment process.
If you would like to be involved in this project, then please contact streetlevel@jodiechesneyfoundation.org. Your partnership and support to the Jodie Chesney Foundation will of course be highlighted on our website and social media platforms and you will be regularly updated via email on the project’s progress. All our upcoming initiatives can be seen on our website and social media as and when we implement them.
This is just the beginning of the work that the Jodie Chesney Foundation intends to do in the fight against knife violence and fatality. We believe this will be a great start to our work with young people and parents.
Peter Chesney
