Story by Nelson Kaggwa, Chair of ACCM
Local Community users at the Agency for Culture and Change Management (ACCM) based at All Saints Centre in Ellesmere are excited to be able to fund some mentors that work with young people.
They have been awarded an Awards for All grant to support their work. They provide a youth club at the centre, and a variety of cultural activities including enabling parents to nurture their toddlers in a pre-school scheme. ACCM provides sessions that keep children in safe and supervised environments all week long. This project has good volunteer mentors but needs to recruit more who can help to offer positive life changes to vulnerable young people.
ACCM recruits and trains volunteers who come from similar backgrounds as the young people they are supporting. In that way they can access young people and build relationships in a way that is difficult for other services to achieve.
Roxanne Fullelove said:
“Dealing with isolation, as a young person, someone is on your case trying to entice you with drugs, you cannot do the homework and your parents don’t speak much English. Where do you go when out of school?”
As some of the charity’s work is carried out on the streets, consultations are made through street discussions involving young people and by gauging their response to the problems in the areas and putting them at ease.
Results have been shared in public meetings in churches and mosques where feedback and input on findings and strategies have fed directly into the work of ACCM. Our consultation shows that gang leaders are getting clued up to how police operate and they’re getting children aged 12, 13 or 14 to go out and sell the drugs for them. It’s another form of grooming and exploitation.
To get in touch with ACCM please email accmprojects@outlook.com
