Following a varied 30 year career in both private and public sectors, my final role was as Performance and IT Manager at the Dorset Devon and Cornwall CRC, whilst ensuring the smooth transition to the current Probation systems (known as Transforming Rehabilitation).
The new organisation held a celebratory event, at which I met Steven Duncan, Spoken Word Artist in Social and Criminal Justice and school friend of Michael Wallace (below). 2 years later, Steve introduced me to KickOff@3 and immediately knew I had to help.
In June 2018, Steve invited me to attend the Finale Event at The Warren and I fell in love with how closely the ethos fit to the path identified in my degree research into reducing crime amongst our young people. Engaging, befriending, identifying work/training opportunities and leading by example are the key elements to avoiding a life of crime, but the exciting part of KickOff@3 is that the adults befriending the youngsters are local serving police officers. Once introduced to Michael, I began to publicise their work via Social Media and soon found that my lack of a coherent career path fit me perfectly to support the many administrative tasks required to support a constantly growing not-for-profit organisation.
In the intervening year I completed my BSc in Criminology and Psychology and alongside my work with a local child protection charity, began to provide back room support for KickOff@3. It is the joy of my life to be part of the KickOff@3 family and help drive this unique and timely project further across the UK and beyond, helping to prove that our communities have the biggest role in crime prevention, not our justice system.
P.S. Meeting our lovely supporter, Colin Salmon at this year’s Finale was a wonderful bonus (above).
