Front row: Alan Keast Tamworth Boxing manager, Staffordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Ellis and Lee O’Donnell, instructor at Tamworth Boxing
A Tamworth boxing club has been awarded £3,000 from the Police and Crime Commissioner’s People Power Fund to encourage school pupils to engage in sport.
Tamworth Boxing Club has been given the funding to offer schools a taster session of boxing techniques, so young people have the opportunity to express their emotions in a positive way.
As part of his commitment to local communities, the Commissioner is providing £500,000 in 2015/16 through the People Power Fund in the form of grants of between £100 and £3,000.
The fund is supporting locally-driven community safety activities in communities throughout Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent.
Mr Ellis said: “I have significantly increased the funding that local areas in Staffordshire have to make their communities safer.
“The Commissioner’s People Power Fund puts half a million pounds back into local communities and is easy and simple to apply for.
“Activities like this are great for young people to express themselves and gives them a chance to keep active.
“It is important to engage with young people which mean we can intervene early to tackle the problem of anti-social behaviour.”
Alan Keast, Tamworth Boxing manager, said: “The funding we have received from the Power People Fund has helped us to engage with hundreds of young people in six different schools. Boxing has a long history of providing alternative activities that provide changes that last for life.
“Tamworth Boxing will continue to support young people to make positive changes to their behaviour.”
The window for the next round of applications for People Power Funding opened on Sunday 1 March and runs until Tuesday 14 April.
People Power applications need to be sponsored by the group’s local Neighbourhood Police Officer or Police Community Support Officer. More details, including application forms and an animated video about the fund, are available now at www.staffordshire-pcc.gov.uk/fund.
The People Power Fund is one part of £2.5 million of Commissioner’s Community Funding for 2014/15. The Commissioner’s Locality Deal Fund has allocated money to local areas through working in partnership with local district and borough councils. Meanwhile, the Commissioner’s Proceeds of Crime Fund is seeing 100 per cent of funding received by Staffordshire Police going back into local communities, through grants of between £3,000 and £15,000. It is made up of money seized from criminals as Staffordshire Police continue to strip offenders of their assets.
Successful projects in all three funding streams will deliver what’s important to local people based on the four priorities set out in the Commissioner’s Safer, Fairer, United Communities Strategy – tackling the root causes of crime through early intervention, supporting victims and witnesses better, reducing reoffending and increasing public confidence.
