Dear JCF,
I am writing to thank you for everything you have done to help us as a family and my son as a citizen and human-being.
<em>Our Story</em>
My son completed school with ten GCSEs: four As, five Bs and a C and then went on to college to start his A Levels. That summer one of his best friends, affiliated with a local street gang, was badly beaten and hospitalised when he was attacked by a neighbouring rival gang.
This incident was to change my son’s life for the worst.
As his journey to college was through the area of the city where the same gang operated, he become terrorised to take the bus. Things came to a head when the gang members who previously attacked his best friend began to board the bus and to attack him. And not because he was in a gang but only because he was a known friend of the boy that they had attacked.
We got in touch with the Julian Campbell Foundation who supported my son with the subsequent mental health issues that arose from this “stalking” and he was eventually offered an internship that helped him to find a way out. He was given a sense of purpose and direction and for the first time he realised that the world was much bigger than Wood Green/Tottenham and Edmonton!
This internship didn’t bring him work but it did give him confidence and the ability to move away and to find work and new friends.
Maggie
<p class=”p1″><span class=”s1″>***** I hope this email stands as another amazing tribute to the good work at JCF. ****</span></p>