Football-themed workshop to teach Teesside children about knife crime
MFC Foundation are delivering the workshops in schools
A football-themed education wall is going to help educate young people in Teesside about the dangers of knife crime.
‘No More Red Wall’: No Safe Place to Stab has been developed in partnership with the MFC Foundation and local vascular surgeon Barnabas Green.
The concept will see participants kick a football at inflatable 'figures' before learning about the extent of potentially life-threatening injuries that can be caused by knife crime.
This will be used by the MFC Foundation in workshops and at community events to engage and educate young people about the dangers of knife crime.
Liam Watson, social inclusion manager at the MFC Foundation, said: "The young people would be asked to strike the ball, let's say 10 shots, and we'd look at different parts of the body and how a knife wound would affect those parts of the body, how much pressure you'd actually need to put on it. You'd need around 4kg of pressure on a wound that was severely lacerated.
"When we go and deliver workshops within schools, everyone sees us as the football club and it sort of breaks down barriers to sort of education around topics. Now when we go in, we speak to the young people about knife crime initiatives and they are taking home the major, key messages that we're trying to get across but because of the power of the badge.
"A massive part of this is the making it interactive and making it more of a feeling as opposed to just sitting and listening. We're really, really trying to make sure that they're going home with the messages and they feel the messages, so ultimately we'd like to think we're doing our bit to sort of support bringing down knife crime."
In the last 12 months, CURV-funded interventions have engaged with over 9,500 young people under the age of 24 and a further 800 people over the age of 24, supporting them to make positive life choices and reduce the risk of being drawn into violent crime.
As a result of these collective efforts, the number of knife crime offences involving young people aged 24 and under has reduced by 12% - from 305 offences between January and December 2023 to 268 between January and December 2024.