Offender education and citizenship
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The Rathbone Centre
The Sheffield branch of Rathbone runs a Youth Engagement Project, which aims to locate and engage disaffected young people aged between 15 and 19 in the Sheffield area and to help them progress into mainstream provision. The Rathbone staff team arranged to host a three-day roadshow for 19 young people with an emphasis on citizenship awareness through engaging activities. The programme of activities was designed to motivate young people and raise their awareness of issues locally and city-wide. On the first day, the young people met and interviewed a young local DJ and music producer, hearing about how he had turned away from crime by expressing himself through music. The young people were invited to enter a competition to design a CD sleeve with a citizenship theme, and a young person recorded a citizenship rap that he had written. On the second day, the young people met a police officer who talked with them about the difficulty of distinguishing between real and fake guns using examples of replica guns and toy/ball bearing guns. The officer then went on to discuss knife crime and its affect on society today, and they viewed ‘Knife City– Carrying a knife. It’s not a game’. On the third day, they visited Sheffield United Football Club and were invited to play a game of football with first team coaches watching. At lunch time the group was introduced to two of the first team players and asked them questions about professional football today, the issues of racism and sexism in football, and the importance of teamwork.
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