To help you raise awareness among your community about serious violent crime and what can be done to help prevent it, we’ve compiled a range of free campaign materials that you can use to inform and educate people in your neighbourhood.  These resources will help parents and other adults raise the subject with their children or other youngsters they know, to try to deter them from carrying knives or other weapons.

Resources include:

  • Leaflets that you can print off and put through people’s letterboxes, or forward to them via email.

  • A quiz that you can use to test a young person’s knowledge about knife crime and its associated risks.

  • Online materials such as campaign websites, videos, GIFs and graphics that you can forward to people by email or share on social media sites such as your Neighbourhood Watch Facebook group or Twitter feed.

  • A Powerpoint presentation that you can use to host a public meeting to rasie awareness in your community about the dangers of knife crime and how to prevent it.

  • A template campaign action plan. You don’t have to follow this to the letter but it provides some ideas of how to use the toolkit materials in a multi-week awareness and prevention campaign.

  • A template cover letter that you can use to raise awareness of this information pack/toolkit, among your Neighbourhood Watch members, by email or as a Facebook post.

Printable resources

The Knife Crime Conversation leaflet

See the Downloads section below to download a Neighbourhood Watch leaflet about how to have the conversation with young people about the dangers of knives.

The Neighbourhood Watch Knife Crime quiz

You can also find this in the Downloads section below.

Online resources

Lots of Neighbourhood Watch groups now have Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. See below for some online materials about knife crime and how to prevent it, that can be easily shared via email or on social media accounts. 

Websites

If you want to find out more about how to talk to young people about knife crime, read the Ben Kinsella Trust guide here.

The Home Office has launched a new campaign urging young people to “live #knifefree” as part of its Serious Violence Strategy.  The #knifefree campaign website can be found here.

The ChildLine website has a section dedicated to gun and knife crime, with advice for children and young people on how to avoid getting caught up in it and what to do if you are.

Self-proclaimed “community supporter” Garvin Snell (@GarvinSnell) has made this very funny film which he posted on Twitter called Self defence for young people: How to defend yourself against a knife attack.  It’s definitely worth showing to your kids or grandkids, and their friends.

There’s a website aimed at people under 25 called The Mix which has advice about what young people can do if they feel the need to carry a weapon.

Art Against Knives works with at-risk young people living in areas of London affected by knife crime and facilitates creative opportunities to help them secure employment, education or training.

If you are in Scotland, No Knives Better Lives has lots of resources to tackle knife crime.  Their guides can be found here.

www.knifecrimes.org is an online information resource about knife and gun crimes and gang-related activity.  As well as providing peer support to families and friends affected by serious violent crime or bereaved as a result of a murder, it offers training, research and awareness-raising activities to achieve better rights for victims.

Films

Several organisations have made interactive films that let the viewer decide what happens next.  The choices you make will decide whether you live or die.  These are good to share with young people on social media – if your Neighbourhood Watch group has a Facebook page or Twitter account, you can post it there and invite members to share it with their teenagers.

Choose a different ending (Please note, this only works on a desktop, not mobile).

There’s also the interactive video quiz from No Knives Better Lives.

And various other films on that site which are worth a watch: nkbl-films.

The BBC has produced a short film called ‘How not to die from a stabbing’, the true story of Dom, who was stabbed in Preston on 21 December 2015.

Leicestershire Police have produced a film called A father’s story, where the father of Lauric Lebato explains how his life has been destroyed by the murder of his 22-year-old son.  Warning: It contains actual footage of his son being stabbed.

Training

If you want to get more involved in helping young people in your community to make positive choices and reject a lifestyle of violence, there are a number of training providers who can deliver courses to young people.

Training for young people:

The Ben Kinsella Trust runs a variety of courses and workshops for children and young people.  They even have one specifically for girls and one for young people who have already been involved in criminal activity.  Find out more about all of these here.

Leap Confronting Conflict is a national youth charity that offers conflict management training and support to young people and the professionals working with them.  Its programmes for young people help them to manage conflict in their lives and achieve their goals. This includes self-reflective group work, one-to-one support outside the training room and peer-mediation, delivered by experienced teams of trainers.  Find out more here.

StreetDoctors is a charity that teaches emergency lifesaving skills to young people, working with local partner agencies to reach those youngsters identified as most vulnerable to violence.  It’s a volunteer network of medical students and junior doctors which was set up in Liverpool in 2008. Two volunteers were teaching first aid at a youth offending centre when they were shocked to learn that most of the youngsters they were working with had witnessed, or been a victim of, a stabbing or a shooting.

StreetDoctors was registered as a charity in 2013 and now operates in 12 cities. Its teaching plan was developed to be relevant to young people but also interactive and fun.  Trainees learn about blood loss and how organs work, so they understand the frailties of the human body and what to do if someone is wounded. Find out more here.

If you live in Croydon, there is a youth-led charity called Lives Not Knives which runs roadshows in local schools to identify young people most at risk of gang affiliation.  They also train mentors with personal experience of violent crime to mentor these young people and help them make positive life choices. Find out more here.

The Scottish anti-knife charity No Knives Better Lives has developed a wealth of resources for peer educators.

Want someone to come and speak at you Neighbourhood Watch meeting or a community event, about knife crime?

Most of the charities listed above will speak at events to raise awareness of the dangers of violent crime.  There’s also:

Say No 2 Knives was set up by its founder Sarah after she was stabbed in the face by youths who wanted her phone.  The charity will come and give talks at events, and say that no location is too far. Email Info@sayno2knives.co.uk or call 07590 414605.