Two campaigners tackling knife and gang crime in London are among those on the New Year honours list.
Mark Prince, a former boxer, receives an OBE for his work after the fatal stabbing of his 15-year-old son, Kiyan, a prodigious footballing talent, in 2006.
The former WBO world light-heavyweight champion set up the Kiyan Prince Foundation to deliver his anti-knife, anti-gang message to thousands of pupils in London’s schools. His I Have a Dream programme combines intensive boxing training sessions with weekly one-hour workshops on subjects such as gang life, knife crime and drug and substance abuse.
He said: “My son lost his life, and this is what I can give back on behalf of my son. This is not about going around saying ‘oh, I’ve got an OBE,’ because that doesn’t really do anything for me when I go to the cemetery to visit my son.”
He said his award demonstrated “that people like us from our community can do great things and be recognised for the great things that we are trying to do for others”.
Stephen Addison, the founder of BoxUp Crime, receives a British Empire Medal for services to young people in Barking and Dagenham, where he helped spread a similar message. Following the loss of a close friend to gang violence, and after being involved in gangs himself, he turned his life around to work with young people teaching non-contact boxing skills in schools, pupil referral units and community centres in London, as well as mentoring.
“I feel very humble to get this award,” he said. “But I’ve lost seven kids in the space of a year that have been murdered. We’ve seen 131 murders in London. And the reality is these young people, where we work and where we’re from, they don’t have access to hope, they don’t get to see success, they don’t get to see awards.
“So, when I receive this award, it’s not for me, it’s for these young kids to show them that I’ve come from the same mess as you.
“My vision is to see young people all over London, all over the UK, to have opportunities to win awards like this, put suits on, forget about their past, forget about all the murders that they’ve had to witness, and actually to bring the hope back to their communities”.
