Better Bethnal Green secures £800000 through Mayor of London’s MyEnds violence prevention programme
Better Bethnal Green has secured £800,000 in funding through the Mayor of London’s Violence Reduction Unit MyEnds programme, placing Bethnal Green among the key London neighbourhoods receiving targeted investment to prevent violence and support young people. Announced by Mayor Sadiq Khan as part of a wider £14.5 million expansion of the VRU’s flagship MyEnds programme, the funding will support a community-led violence prevention approach in Bethnal Green East and West wards led locally by Better Bethnal Green.
What the MyEnds funding means for Bethnal Green
The Mayor said the new investment will expand the MyEnds programme from eight areas to 11 community-led neighbourhoods while also extending prevention activity across all 32 London boroughs for the first time. The programme is designed around the idea that local people and grassroots organisations are best placed to respond to violence in the areas they know best. In Tower Hamlets that means Better Bethnal Green will lead a hyper-local model focused on prevention early intervention and positive opportunities for young people in Bethnal Green.
A community-led approach to tackling youth violence in Bethnal Green
According to the official City Hall announcement the VRU MyEnds programme supports youth work after-school provision mentoring sport music arts drama and support for parents and carers. In Bethnal Green the Better Bethnal Green MyEnds network will use its funding over two years to deliver a broad package of local interventions including:
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targeted street work
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crime prevention education programmes
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centre-based youth work sports and diversionary activities
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targeted 1-to-1 interventions and family support
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school-based programmes
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training and employability support
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capacity building and small grants for local groups
This makes Better Bethnal Green one of the most important local youth violence prevention programmes in Tower Hamlets with a model built around neighbourhood knowledge partnership working and sustained community engagement.
Why Better Bethnal Green matters in Tower Hamlets
The MyEnds approach is built on evidence that violence is often concentrated in small neighbourhood pockets rather than across whole boroughs and that community-led violence prevention is more effective when local organisations young people parents and residents shape the response themselves. City Hall says MyEnds has already supported more than 50,000 young people and community members, delivered activities and interventions to more than 48,000 young people, and held nearly 600 community events each year since launching in April 2021.
For Bethnal Green this funding gives Better Bethnal Green the platform to strengthen local partnerships and deliver targeted support where it is needed most. It also places the area within a wider London-wide movement to reduce violence through prevention opportunity and community leadership.
Better Bethnal Green at the heart of local prevention and support
Better Bethnal Green sits within the wider MyEnds Tower Hamlets and VRU-funded ecosystem of youth work community safety and early intervention. Osmani Trust has publicly said it is proud to lead the Better Bethnal Green consortium alongside partners such as Streets of Growth and Spotlight, showing that the programme is rooted in collaboration as well as local delivery.
Learn more about Better Bethnal Green and MyEnds
The Mayor’s funding announcement shows that Better Bethnal Green is now part of a major city-wide investment in tackling violence through grassroots youth work, community partnerships, and local prevention programmes. For organisations residents and young people in Bethnal Green this marks a significant step in building safer neighbourhoods and better opportunities for the future.
Notes to editors:
- Better Bethnal Green (BBG) – MyEnds consortium in Tower Hamlets is led by Osmani Trust for more information visit https://www.osmanitrust.org/aims-objectives/projects/better-bethnal-green-bbg/
- For more details on the MyEnds programme and the networks operating across London, visit here: https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/communities-and-social-justice/londons-violence-reduction-unit/our-programmes/myends
- The Mayor of London set up the Violence Reduction Unit in 2019 to lead an approach to tackling violence, rooted in prevention and early intervention.
- It invests in opportunities for young people and intervening at key points in their life – that includes roles for parents, schools, youth workers and communities.
- Since 2019, the VRU has invested in up to 350,000 interventions and opportunities for young people. During this period there has been a 22 per cent reduction in homicides, a 20 per cent fall in knife crime with injury for those aged under-25, and a 16 per cent reduction in robbery.
- MyEnds is a community-led, hyper-local programme. It funds consortiums formed of local people, giving them the tools and resources to tackle violence. The areas they operate in could be an estate or a small pocket of roads experiencing high levels of violence.
- The VRU invested in eight consortiums from April 2021 to March 2024. These were in: Brent, Croydon, Hackney, Haringey, Lambeth, Newham, Southwark and Tower Hamlets.
- MyEnds won the Better Outcomes category at the 2023 MJ Awards. The MJ awards are a national awards programme, celebrating excellence in local government.
- The new MyEnds programme has been expanded to nine main consortiums. These include four new ones in Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Islington and Lewisham, alongside existing networks in Croydon, Lambeth, Haringey, Southwark and Tower Hamlets. They will each get £800,000 to deliver prevention and early intervention work from May 2024 to April 2026.
- The VRU is also providing continuity funding of £150,000 in Newham and Hackney to help the two consortiums to continue delivering and to be sustainable.
