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Why is B4C Important?

Why spend £75,000 keeping a young person in prison, when the experience is largely negative and you could do so much with that money to stop them being there in the first place.

The UK is currently bottom of the UNICEF list of 21 industrialised countries for youth well-being and youth disengagement costs us billions every year.  The arithmetic doesn’t add up because when a senior Metropolitan Police Officer wanted us to run a media project helping young officers and young offenders to understand each other, he said he did not have the £15,000 budget.

B4C is important because though there are positive youth initiatives everywhere, they work independently, have no collective voice and are largely run by underpaid, unsung heroes.

After working for 20 years on media-youth projects, we have visited many of them and all are constantly under threat and under budget.  B4C will unify them and act as a channel of communication and support, taking messages to decision-makers and creating a sense of a common interest and common goal in society.

We all see a part of the picture, but when you piece it all together, you realise that more and more young people have lost their way and are giving up hope.  We guess at the reasons and their misdemeanours are often their only response because their problems can see insoluble and they don’t believe the adult world is listening to them. These are just some of the reasons B4C makes sense, but we also believe in the involvement of as many people as possible in decision-making roles, to create a national campaign for a better future for young people.