Community initiative aims to cut gang and knife crime

Birmingham entrepreneur launches Selly Park Community Hub to support local residents.

A Birmingham-based entrepreneur has launched the new community initiative Selly Park Community Hub, to help raise awareness and tackle modern-day problems faced by local communities.

The programme was celebrated with a launch event hosted by The Hub at Selly Park Baptist Church demonstrating solidarity amongst religions as well as vital members of the community themselves.

Abid Khan, Selly Park Community Hub Chairman, explains: “The initiative started through communication with other members of the community recognising that there was no place for the locals to discuss the problems and find the solutions for the issues that we face within our everyday lives.”

“One of the most predominant problems is gangs and knife crime, which still dominates local headlines and continues to be one of the most ongoing threats. With this in mind, we took the launch event as an opportunity to educate members of the community with talks from the local Police and the magistrate about this and other issues.”

West Midlands Police were in attendance and the attendees from the local community were shown various knives that members of gangs have had confiscated from them, in the hope to educate attendees

We were also lucky to have Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust in attendance who addressed the relationship between knife crime and mental health to our members”, continues Abid. “Here we hope with this community programme we can help educate members and build a network where others can bring other threats and tackle it together.”

Abid is also the vice-chair of the successful Birmingham Youth Sports Academy, with the club recently announcing the launch of a dedicated Mentoring Programme to help inspire and influence its players and develop role models and ambassadors who could influence their own local communities.

For more information on the initiative, contact Abid on [email protected] or 07583 044624