Significant Grant Provided to Safeguard Local Youngsters On and Offline
A leading city safeguarding charity has received a significant grant from the Randal Charitable Foundation to protect youngsters and help them make the right life choices.
Warning Zone, based in Leicester city centre, is dedicated to safeguarding and teaching life-skills to 20,000 local children and young people each year.
To help with their work in educating and protecting the youngsters online and offline, the Foundation, which is based in Loughborough, has provided the significant grant towards the charity’s state-of-the-art Life Sciences Skills Centre, based in Frog Island.
The centre, and through the charity’s Roadcrew mobile shows, aims to prevent online and off-line coercion and increase awareness of risk. They also focus on decreasing the likelihood of choices that may lead to injury, death, personal harm, criminal records, bullying, anti-social behaviour, knife crime, incarceration, grooming, abuse, exploitation, county lines involvement, radicalisation and extremism.
Dr Nik Kotecha OBE, Chair of Trustees for the Randal Charitable Foundation, said: “Our mission is to directly save lives, as well as to support initiatives which provide essential educational support; particularly to initiatives which may prevent the loss of life.
“We’re delighted to be supporting Warning Zone, which through its centre is giving the children and young people the essential life skills to protect themselves while online and offline. This is particularly important, as making the right choices and taking steps to safeguard themselves, is essential at this stage in their personal growth.”
Part of the donation will fund 1,630 high quality training sessions, delivered for 10-11 year olds, on risks associated with online coercion, grooming, bullying and scamming. The courses present the real risks of life for children growing through to teenage years, delivered in an honest, compassionate and understandable way in order to encourage responsible behaviour and sound decision making, while living full and active lives.
The funding will also go towards major repairs to the centre, which aims to provide knowledge and understanding of risk, consequence of actions, peer pressure and personal responsibility.
Chief Executive of Warning Zone, Elaine Stevenson, said “We are extremely grateful to the Randal Charitable Foundation for this very generous donation. We opened in this current building 10 years ago, so we have major repairs to carry out on the roof that would not be possible without their generous support.
“The Foundation is also supporting our work on building resistance to coercion, including online and offline grooming. Children are increasingly vulnerable to being coerced into county lines drug dealing, and grooming for sexual activity. We aim to increase children’s confidence in seeking help, talking, knowing what makes them vulnerable and how to stay safe.
“We are proud of the work we achieve and we know that the Foundation has a vision to directly save lives and significantly improve the quality of life for those that need it in the UK and globally. Warning Zone fits this brief at an early and important stage in a child’s life.”
