Imagine having a friend who goes home to an environment where they are constantly shot at (with actual guns and bullets), sometimes the bullets hit, other times they do not. An environment where they are also exposed to physical violence, because it’s necessary to alter their behavior in a ‘more acceptable fashion’. An environment… Read more →←
Topic: Safety and justice
I was robbed, right here on the corner of my school Kingston College about two years ago. There is a security camera on the same road as the school, and one time it caught two students being robbed. The video also captured cars just driving by. Nobody stopped to help. Back then, it seemed like every day a student was being robbed or… Read more →←
I coach at Fight for Peace teaching youths martial arts as a way to get them to exert some energy and aggression that might be pent up in them throughout the day. Taekwondo is my passion and even though at 24 I have now been a world champion four times, my real passion is for coaching. I lost my father to violence at age 5. So, for… Read more →←
Dwight Cooper, aged 13, does not say much. Instead he leads other children through his actions. Their eyes following his movements, the taekwondo class shadows him step-by-step. Whenever a student makes a mistake, it does not prompt admonishment from Dwight. Instead his style is to pause the session, walk over and demonstrate the correct… Read more →←
My name is Courtney Greaves, I am eight years old and I want to be that voice for children who are voiceless. I like to listen to the news and if I hear something about a child I just get a piece of paper and write it down and put in a poem form and I will let my mother video it so I won’t forget it. The other day there was a girl… Read more →←
We have just arrived at a classroom in Denham Town, Kingston when an excited boy runs outside. Afew moments later he bolts back into the room, and soon after he is calmly leading a host of other young children in relaxation techniques. “Breathe deep!” he instructs, and everyone follows his lead – taking a long breath in and then… Read more →←
Two years ago, 16-year-old Michael Bryan was caught up in a violent gang lifestyle, in the volatile community of Thompson Pen, Spanish Town where he had grown up. “As a young youth, if you did anything disrespectful to me, I was going to either hit you in your face or push my ratchet (knife) into you,” Michael admits. “That’s all… Read more →←
When I volunteered for Fight for Peace, I thought I was just going to be coaching taekwondo. But now I see that with sports you can change young people, and you can change their families. You can even change a community. Our Unity and Peace programme runs in six communities in Kingston, which can sometimes be in conflict with each other… Read more →←
When I was younger, I was always on the road getting into trouble and my parents getting complaints. To be honest, when I joined Fight for Peace in 2017 it was because I wanted to fight. But boxing has allowed me to see something else: that I actually have something inside me, some potential. Being at Fight for Peace, winning fights and… Read more →←
Being kicked out of school, sitting at home with nothing to do, showed me the importance of education. I was going through a rough patch. I had issues at home, self-esteem issues, and having no one to talk to about my stress made it worse. After I was expelled I spoke with the guidance counsellor and was hopeful about showing that I… Read more →←