The Be Safe Weapons Project is dedicated to making the lives of ordinary every-day people safer.

Be Safe was started in 1998 by two former London police officers specialising in keeping officers and the public safe by dealing with violent / aggressive behaviour. Both had been privileged to have researched various ways of dealing with violent / aggressive behaviour and had helped to design and implement training programmes aimed at reducing injury to both officers and the public.

Having left the police to start their own personal safety consultancy, they devised the first weapons awareness sessions, called Knife Talk. This was in response to concerns from the local magistrates about the number of young offenders that were armed.

In 2005 Be Safe opened a charitable subsidiary company, The Be Safe Project, in order to take the workshops to those groups that were unable to fund the cost themselves. These sessions were so successful that everyone who saw them wanted to be able to get the input for their young people.

Be Safe have worked closely with Local authorities, Colleges, Schools and many other organisations that have recognised the need for this type of training. One aspect of our work has been to run workshops for young people (initially just young offenders but now available to any groups of young people), trying to discourage them from violent behaviour and weapons carrying.

Read more about the Be Safe Weapons Workshops here >>
See the Be Safe Weapons Knife Crime Programme here >>

For more information on the Be Safe Project please visit the website: www.besafetraining.com

Sunderland Anti-Knife Crime Real Life Stories
Profiled here is one of the final film entries from the Real Life stories competition run by IDHTH (It Doesn't Have to Happen Programme). The competition, launched back in December 2009, invited young people across England and Wales already enrolled on the national Knife Crime Prevention Programme (KCPP) to submit a 3 minute film capturing their experiences and views on the effects of knife crime. The aim of these films is to convey the consequences of knife crime and deter other young people from carrying a knife.

Here a young man talks retrospectively about his first-hand experience with knife crime and draws on his experiences to deter other young people from carrying a knife. The young people at Sunderland YOT were involved in the behind the scenes production for the film.