Our first RTK of 2025 was a powerful session, featuring Sarah Turner MBACP. Through her insights and therapeutic interventions, we explored ways to support young people in making positive life choices.

We also took a moment to honour Twilight Bey, a dear friend of RTK, whose legacy continues to inspire our work.

RTK will return on May 1st, 2025!
Stay tuned for further details – we look forward to seeing you there!

Don’t miss our first RTK meeting of 2025

Sarah Turner (Intercultural Psychotherapist) will be with us to share about breaking chains of intergenerational trauma in adults and children. To know more about Sarah and her work, visit her website: Sarah Turner Counseling

Thursday 6th of March

V61 West Side Church Melody Road SW18 2QQ

Zoom ID: 839 5382 5629 (Passcode 382327)

Join us on 6th March | 7:30 PM @ Vineyard 61 West Side

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we transition following team changes. Thank you for your continued support—it means the world to us.

Don’t miss it—see you there!

On Thursday 5 December, we heard from King Carl Mensah, a boxer, entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker. Carl overcame adversity in his early life, and now uses his experience to encourage others.

During our evening together, Carl was able to connect with those present, describing how rather than allowing bullying or a personal robbery to cause him to retreat from life, he used them as motivation to work to increase his fitness and resilience, becoming a successful boxer. Read the story in his recently published book, The Best Comeback King in the World.

At our last gathering, we welcomed people joining us for the first time, as well as familiar faces, as we reflected on the 5 years since RTK began. It was moving to see pictures of the many people we have honoured in those 5 years, as lives lost too soon to knife and gun violence.

As different people gave their perspectives, we felt gratitude for the many groups and individuals who continue to join us, and for all those who work in employment and voluntary roles to address knife crime. Our passion remains as strong to see effective action to reduce the impact of knife crime on young people in our localities.

Note for your diary: Our next meeting will be at 7.30pm on Thursday 3 October.

At our last gathering online, we were inspired by what we heard from Clifton McDonald, an experienced youth mentor and mentor trainer – reflecting on the issues facing young people. He spoke about the importance of young people feeling supported, not just by their families, but by the whole community. He quoted these African proverbs:

It takes a village to raise a child.

The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.

He also drew attention to the importance of awareness of our own unspoken rules and those of others, as one of the keys in learning to manage conflict. Clifton has worked with a wide range of organisations, including Leap Confronting Conflict to equip young people (and adults) to address conflict, a skill needed in every avenue of life.

We are grateful for Clifton joining us last week, and deeply appreciate him as a valued friend in our RTK community.

On Thursday 2 May via Zoom, we were glad to welcome Greg and Esme from Rosslyn Park Community who talked about their programme that is bringing tailored programmes to Wandsworth schools.

Quinton Green, aka Mr Milise, joined us on 7 March to talk about his work with MMAP Workshops and Knife Crime Victim Support (KCVS), and experience his talent in spoken word. Read more below. Our next meeting is via Zoom only at 7.30pm on Thursday 2 May.

Quinton talked about how his childhood adversity, his personal encounter with knife crime and his own experience of turning his life around, act as a foundation for his work with young people – to support them to face their own difficult experiences through different forms of creative writing, and to prepare them for positive opportunities.

He brought a powerful message of the need for compassion, understanding and acceptance of young people, and the preparation for and provision of opportunities for those who have experienced adversity and/or the difficulty of challenges encountered in the youth justice system.

We heard one of Quinton’s spoken word pieces. His work can be found on Youtube: see Field of Vision and Knife Sentence.

We are grateful to Quinton for his positive and inspiring message and the conversations this provoked.

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us last Thursday for our conversation with our local police Youth Engagement and Diversion team. People shared personal stories, and we saw the passion of this diverse police team to be part of building trust between police, young people and the wider community. More detail below. Meanwhile, for your diary: our next meeting is 7.30pm on Thursday 7 March.

We heard from individuals, including those involved in various community action organisations (Man in Action, JCT and Soul), about their experiences and about ideas for building better relationships with police officers. The diverse team for Wandsworth youth engagement includes men and women from Poland, Portugal and all over the Caribbean, working together with a shared passion. They explained their work and their own ideas for creating positive change. Thank you to everyone for their honesty and openness.

On Thursday we also honoured Archie Beston, who died in 2020. This kind, hard-working, fun-loving young man is deeply missed.

Last Thursday we heard from Yinka Bakare, a therapeutic counsellor, who outlined how trauma may affect us, and when to seek extra help – as well as how we can support one another. This was very helpful and relevant to many of us, and we are so grateful to Yinka for opening up this important understanding. See our highlights page for a video clip of Yinka’s presentation. For those who’d like to connect with Yinka, he is available through Footprints Counselling Services, and for more information and ways to look for help related to trauma, MIND has great resources.