Sadiq Khan expands mentoring programme to 70,000 young people

LondonWorld

The mayor of London Sadiq Khan has expanded his mentoring programme to over 70,000 young people aiming to expand to 100,000 by the end of 2024.  One of the projects involved in the scheme includes Switchback, which helps young men to rebuild their lives after leaving prison.

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00:00 I'm really pleased and proud to be supporting mentoring in London. I've seen the difference

00:04 a mentor can make in my own life. When I was young, I was very lucky, living on a council

00:09 estate, going to a state school, getting great mentorship from teachers, from youth workers,

00:14 from my big brothers. Many of my friends on the estate didn't have those mentors and I'm

00:19 afraid they didn't fulfil the potential like I was fortunate to do so. I know also that

00:25 if we're going to reduce violent crime further, yes we've got to be tough on crime by supporting

00:28 the police, but we've got to be tough on the complex causes as well by prevention and early

00:32 intervention. So what we're doing from City Hall is using £34 million to fund 100,000

00:38 young people to receive a good quality mentor. And the sort of young people we want to help

00:43 are those who haven't got an adult relationship. If you're at home and you are seeing domestic

00:48 violence, if you're in danger of being excluded from school or being excluded, if you're living

00:52 in poverty, if you've just left prison or a young offender's institution. So we are

00:56 supporting 150 projects across London. Switchback is one of the projects we are funding to provide

01:03 good quality mentoring to young people. The great news is 70,000 young people have already

01:09 received a mentor. By the end of this year we're on course to smash our target of 100,000

01:15 young people. But clearly between now and then there's an election taking place on May

01:19 2nd. It's a very close election between me and the Tory candidate. I say in a respectful

01:23 way to my friends who are Lib Dems and Greens, they can't win the mayoral election. If you

01:29 vote Lib Dem or Green it's one less for the Tory to receive. So I'm asking you to lend

01:33 me your vote. I worry should the Conservative win, we've seen in the last 14 years the cuts

01:40 the Conservatives have made around the country. My message to Londoners is do not allow the

01:46 Conservatives to do to London what they've done to the rest of the country. They've done

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