“It is much towards the inside than the outside” Ana Richardson,(11 years old) an active member of the year 6 Youth Club, Deans Youth Centre, Swinton shared her views based on what she has learned during the sessions organised under the Hate Crime Awareness week. She commented how she will make sure nobody gets victimized because of the hate crime and she will share the hate crime awareness knowledge with her family and friends.
What is hate crime?
A hate crime is when someone commits a crime against you because of your disability, transgender identity, race, sexual orientation, religion, or alternative subculture. (LetsEndHateCrime.com, #WeStandTogether). Getting to know about hate crimes, their influence factors, and how to spread the knowledge across society is something worth learning from a younger age when you live especially in a multi-community context like Salford.
It doesn’t just mean physical violence. Someone using offensive language towards you, or harassing you because of who you are (or whom they think you are), is also committing a hate crime.
My experience at the Deans Youth Centre
Being an employee of Salford CVS for four months, this was the first time I visited one of the activities we supported under the hate crime awareness week fund. I was so excited to be at the Deans Youth Centre, meet them and observe one of their sessions conducted for youth.
I met Ana and her friends during this visit on 14th February 2023. The session was organised to commemorate Hate Crime Awareness Week. It had arts and music elements so that 11-12 year age old children could participate and come up with some creative ideas on how to raise awareness against hate crimes. Salford CVS together with Salford City Council and Greater Manchester Police invited applications for grants from the community, voluntary, and social enterprise sector to carry out activities in Hate Crime Awareness Week.
The Deans Youth Centre of Salford CC is one of the grant recipients among many and their objective is to disseminate hate crime awareness knowledge through social media posts so they could reach a wider audience. The social media posts will be created by youth groups and LGBT groups after attending learning sessions. Attendees came up with creative ideas such as a song, a piece of art, a creative write-up, or anything else that could be influential in terms of hate crime awareness.
When I visited the Deans Youth Centre it was the day for year 6 (11-12 year olds) members to participate in the hate crime awareness session. There were 25 participants and the group was energetic, determined, and open. Before starting the session they freely roamed around the room by keeping themselves busy with what they liked. Some played basketball on the outside ground, some played table football, two girls were playing table tennis while some got themselves busy with dominos, some also started drawing and painting. It was a room filled with energy and creative ideas. While the kids spent some free time before the sessions the youth centre staff started to prepare dinner for them. It was amazing to see most of the kids lend their hands in the food preparation as well.
While everyone got busy I managed to get the hold of Youth Worker Matt Parry for a small chat. He mentioned that they are planning to conduct similar types of six sessions in total throughout February month commemorating Hate Crime Awareness Week. He stressed that the sessions cover and discuss participants’ understanding of hate crime, how to identify issues related to it, and how to report them. They will learn to write songs to raise awareness of hate crimes by participating in the music sessions while some of them will engage in arts, paintings, etc.
After about 30 minutes break, the kids were provided with letters printed on A4-size papers to colour them. The letters consisted of the phrase ‘I stand against the Hate Crime’. While they were busy with their colouring another group engaged with the musician following certain rhythms. Young people played electric drums, keyboards, and manual drums for the beats directed by the musician. It was interesting to see, how they followed the tutor naturally and unintentionally. The purpose of this activity was to get a basic idea about the rhythm, so kids can develop their own music videos and songs.
A Chinese philosopher Confucius once said, ‘If your plan is for one year, plant rice; if your plan is for ten years, plant trees; if your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.’
This shows children take knowledge from generation to generation. Educating children in a younger age on topics like hate crimes is vital as they will act as responsible citizens one day. I was fortunate enough to witness the effort taken by the Deans Youth Centre to educate a younger group on this matter.
How to report a hate crime
- Via the Police by calling 101
- Via your local gateway centre- letsendhatecrime.com
- Online at report-it.org.uk
Useful links/ details
If you live around Swinton or Salford you can visit Deans Youth Centre with your kids and you can find more details through the following links. www.facebook.com/TheDeansYouthCentre
https://directory.salford.gov.uk/kb5/salford/directory
If you are interested in the steps that the government has taken on hate crime awareness; please visit this plan published by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to tackle hate crime 2020-2023.
There are hate crime reporting centres around Salford and please find more details here: www.salford.gov.uk/crime-reduction-and-emergencies/hate-crime/
contact us
sign up
Join us
