Roger Godsiff
Chairman, Charlton Trust Board of Trustees
The Charlton Athletic Charitable Trust wholeheartedly supports the initiative to highlight the dangers of knife crime and the devastating affects that this can have on individual's families and whole communities.
Week in, and week out, the Trust harnesses and uses the power of football to engage with young people, in schools, on estates or in other places where young people congregate and gather. Using our 170 full-time and part-time coaches we try to help young people to achieve their goals in life but we are acutely aware that lives can be destroyed in a moment by somebody wielding a knife.
Carrying a knife, even when you think it is protecting you, is not clever - it is stupid. Being part of a gang whose members have knives is not 'macho' - it is illegal.
The Community Trust coaches not only engage with young people in the community but they also work with young offenders in prisons such as Belmarsh and Maidstone and they will tell you that there is no glamour in being locked up because you have committed a knife related crime.
In highlighting this issue in such a public way the Football Club are to be congratulated for demonstrating once again their commitment to corporate social responsibility. There is not one single easy answer to the problem of knife crime.
All of us, whether as citizens, parents, Police or Politicians have to work to ensure that knife crime is eradicated from our society.
Week in, and week out, the Trust harnesses and uses the power of football to engage with young people, in schools, on estates or in other places where young people congregate and gather. Using our 170 full-time and part-time coaches we try to help young people to achieve their goals in life but we are acutely aware that lives can be destroyed in a moment by somebody wielding a knife.
Carrying a knife, even when you think it is protecting you, is not clever - it is stupid. Being part of a gang whose members have knives is not 'macho' - it is illegal.
The Community Trust coaches not only engage with young people in the community but they also work with young offenders in prisons such as Belmarsh and Maidstone and they will tell you that there is no glamour in being locked up because you have committed a knife related crime.
In highlighting this issue in such a public way the Football Club are to be congratulated for demonstrating once again their commitment to corporate social responsibility. There is not one single easy answer to the problem of knife crime.
All of us, whether as citizens, parents, Police or Politicians have to work to ensure that knife crime is eradicated from our society.
