VIDEO: Hyacinth Francis, founder of the Chayah Project, talks about her previous work with Mothers Against Crime and how she is now working to empower young people.
A Sneinton youth organisation is helping former gang members turn their lives around and earn places at university.
The Chayah Development Project was set up in 2012 by Hyacinth Francis to help young people from inner-city areas get out of gangs and achieve qualifications to give them brighter futures.
One member of staff, who used to receive support at the project, is currently studying at university, while three others, two of whom were involved in gangs, will start in September.
Hyacinth said they were all “out there on the streets in the mix” but now the four members of staff “can see the light at the end of the tunnel” from their troubled pasts.
She hopes many more “will follow in their footsteps”.
Brenda McLennan, 32, is currently studying towards a business management and leadership masters degree at Nottingham Trent University, while Lauren Anderson, 25, will study youth justice from September.
Reece Campbell, 24, and Robert ‘Junior’ Platt, 26, were both previously involved in gangs; Reece will also study youth justice at Nottingham Trent and Junior will either study at Nottingham Trent or De Montfort University, in Leicester.
They all obtained relevant qualifications to get into university.
Junior says he was ‘deeply’ involved in gang culture and was jailed for 18 months for drug dealing in 2008.
He has been working with Hyacinth since 2004, when she ran an organisation called Mothers Against Crime, formed after the shooting of 14-year-old Danielle Beccan.
Danielle was murdered as part of an alleged bitter rivalry raging at the time between rival groups from the Meadows and St Ann’s.
Junior admits he has seen “a lot of attempted murders” and is still “fully trying to get out” of gang culture – and, two years ago, he was shot in the leg on a night out with a stray bullet.
He said: “For the people around Nottingham I was a name, involved in gangs and, if you were involved in a gang, you knew who I was.
“Now you could phone my phone and I could be in these so-called ‘rival areas’ doing what I’m doing. For me, working for the project from so far back is a story that’s the best.
“I’d been involved in gang culture from about 13 years old. Through this project I’m able to do other things, understand how organisations and the police think of what we’re [the Chayah Project] doing.
“It gives me the chance to work with them to make a change.”
He says the work of the Chayah Project has moved on from Mothers Against Crime, which used to take young people on residential trips to get them away from the city and prevent them from retaliating after major crimes.
“Since then it’s about helping kids get out of gang culture and have something to do,” he said, “And developed in the sense of turning the children into mentors and giving them something to do.”
Reece Campbell says one of the most shocking things he saw on the streets was seeing someone die of a drug overdose in an alleyway.
He has been working with Hyacinth since 2007 and says the Chayah Project is important because it creates job opportunities for young people and supports them if they’ve got family or emotional problems – including being victims of domestic abuse.
“Sometimes you don’t know they’re going through these things until they come and sit down and talk and start opening up and think about what’s going on at a deeper level,” he said.
“Most of them think what they’re going through is normal. To them it’s just a normal way of living rather than finding other ways.”
He hopes his and Junior’s involvement in the project, and the story of how they’ve turned around their lives, will encourage more young people involved in gangs to come forward for support.
“Us being in the organisation gives the people out there, in the inner-city areas, an opportunity to have a chance to change,” he said, “A chance for them to get that support or to speak to someone or have somewhere to go, to be around people they can trust.”
Hyacinth says the project has received National Lottery funding to put on women’s and girls’ initiatives but all the work they do with young men is voluntary.
The project holds mixed netball sessions on Monday and Friday nights and annual masquerade balls to engage with young people.
A ‘Night Walk’ funded by Police and Crime Commissioner Paddy Tipping will also take place on Friday, July 21, where groups of young people from different areas of the city and county will unite and walk to Old Market Square, where there will be live performances and speeches.
Hyacinth says this will help ‘reclaim the city’ and engage with young people at risk of crime or those who have been bullied, to break down the barriers of post-code rivalries.
