Ariel Trust has been commissioned to share our ‘Grassing or Grooming?’ resource with 120 primary schools across Merseyside. For a small organisation this represents a very demanding target but with half of the year gone we have already seen 95 schools sign up to become delivery partners.
This online resource gives children the chance to practice skills that they can use to resist grooming by criminal gangs. After watching a short film children step into the role of the victim and explore the reason why a gang member might try to keep children quiet by promoting the idea of 'a Grass'.
All children have a right to ask for help and at the heart of this project we are developing communication skills that young people can use to get support should they get caught up in inappropriate relationships.
One of the teachers who came along said, “The vocabulary exercises were really important. They provided the language that children needed to talk about the issues. I saw them become more confident using complex vocabulary”.
Director of Ariel Trust, Paul Ainsworth said, “The support of Merseyside Violence Reduction Partnership is critical to this work and our project manager, Roger Thompson, has helped us to engage more schools than we thought possible”.
