Project Safe Space was formed as a result of the work of Blackburn and Darwen Youth Forum with young people. The conclusions were brought to United Kingdom Youth Parliament (UKYP) Annual Sitting in Glasgow in July 2007 where over 140 young people shared their views on terrorism and violent extremism. Most of the young people professed that there were no safe places for them to discuss or raise issues on this topic. Therefore the UKYP, with financial aid from the Home Office and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), set to deliver nine regional events in England. The purpose of these conferences is to provide young people in each region with an opportunity to organise and take a lead on creating a safe place for other young people where they can discuss terrorism and violent extremism.
For the Yorkshire and Humber Safe Space conference, Ushna Moghal was asked to be one of the twelve individuals that formed the steering group for this project. The National Steering Group acts as a mechanism to support the delivery of all nine conferences and overlooks the project. This group met for the first time in September at Scotland Yard where they were able to discuss the progress of all regions. This group consists of fourteen young people who all come from diverse communities, based on faith, race, sexual orientation, gender and disability.
The first Yorkshire and Humber conference took place on 22nd November 2008. United Faiths’ members designed a
workshop for the day on the theme of decreasing the possibility of terrorism by promoting social harmony. The significant issues, which were areas that will be discussed at each of the events, were violent extremism, terrorism, young people working with the police and the role of youth community leaders.
United Faiths member Kiran Chana describes her experience of the conference; “The Safe Space Conference was my first experience of helping to lead a workshop. I felt that it was very easy to connect with the participants as they were a similar age to myself. This allowed us to develop strong interaction between all participants. I think that it is important for young people to voice each others’ opinions and ensure that they are heard. I am keen to be involved with similar workshops as I feel these will also prove successful”.
The National Steering group met again in December to spark discussion on the future of the Safe Space project as this group will be instrumental in developing policies on the Preventing Violent extremism agenda.
