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Diocese of London Lent Appeal: Challenging Youth Violence

Youth violence is an issue of great urgency for our time. In 2019, 24 children aged just 17 or younger were murdered with a knife or sharp object. Youth violence, which is prevalent in London, can include fighting, bullying, threats with weapons, and gang-related violence.

For some young people, Covid-19 has made the world even less safe than it already was, through isolation, through having to be absent from school, and through precarious finances. As well as making young people less safe, it has also affected their mental health and their life chances.

The Diocese of London Lent Appeal for 2021 will focus on Youth Violence and the causes that contribute to it.  We will also be raising money to support three chosen charities working to challenge it:

  • REDTHREAD embeds specialist youth workers in hospital A&E departments across London and the Midlands. They meet young people during times of crisis, fear and trauma and endeavour to transform their experience of health systems and professional networks. As a result of working with Redthread, 95% of young people are less likely to be harmed again.
  • TLG work through a nationwide network of partner churches, and are committed to reaching out to some of the most vulnerable children in the UK. With expertise in school exclusions, emotional wellbeing and holiday hunger, TLG is one of the UK’s fastest growing children’s charities.
  • XLP stands for ‘The eXceL Project’. In 1996, in response to a stabbing in a school playground, the school’s headmaster asked Patrick Regan, who was then a local church-based youth worker, to come into the school, work with their students and teachers and help with difficult behavioural issues. XLP now operates across nine inner-city boroughs around London, working with over 4,500 young people each year through education, mentoring, sport and the arts.

Please prayerfully consider ways in which you can support the Lent Appeal 2021 and encourage your friends and family to get involved.

To find out more, watch the video below to see an example of the work this year’s campaign will be supporting; and visit the diocesan website for MORE INFORMATION or to DONATE ONLINE.