Every conversation about crime, gangs or disengagement eventually comes back to the same thing: hope. Our young people are not the problem. The absence of opportunity is.
When I founded JABS B8 FC, the goal was never just football. It was to give children — boys and girls — a place to belong, an adult who believed in them, and a structure for their week. The football is the doorway. The community is the building.
Young people in East Birmingham are some of the most talented, ambitious and resilient I have ever met. What they lack is not aspiration. It is access — to apprenticeships, to mentors, to safe spaces, to careers that feel within reach.
We owe them better. Not warm words, but real pathways. Skills, training, sport, the arts, business start-up support. The cost of investing in our young people is always smaller than the cost of failing them.