The mayor of London Sadiq Khan has expanded his mentoring programme to over 70,000 young people aiming to expand to 100,000 by the end of 2024.
One of the projects involved in the scheme includes Switchback, which helps young men to rebuild their lives after leaving prison.
One of the projects involved in the scheme includes Switchback, which helps young men to rebuild their lives after leaving prison.
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00:00 I'm really pleased and proud to be supporting mentoring in London. I've seen the difference
00:04 a mentor can make in my own life. When I was young, I was very lucky, living on a council
00:09 estate, going to a state school, getting great mentorship from teachers, from youth workers,
00:14 from my big brothers. Many of my friends on the estate didn't have those mentors and I'm
00:19 afraid they didn't fulfil the potential like I was fortunate to do so. I know also that
00:25 if we're going to reduce violent crime further, yes we've got to be tough on crime by supporting
00:28 the police, but we've got to be tough on the complex causes as well by prevention and early
00:32 intervention. So what we're doing from City Hall is using £34 million to fund 100,000
00:38 young people to receive a good quality mentor. And the sort of young people we want to help
00:43 are those who haven't got an adult relationship. If you're at home and you are seeing domestic
00:48 violence, if you're in danger of being excluded from school or being excluded, if you're living
00:52 in poverty, if you've just left prison or a young offender's institution. So we are
00:56 supporting 150 projects across London. Switchback is one of the projects we are funding to provide
01:03 good quality mentoring to young people. The great news is 70,000 young people have already
01:09 received a mentor. By the end of this year we're on course to smash our target of 100,000
01:15 young people. But clearly between now and then there's an election taking place on May
01:19 2nd. It's a very close election between me and the Tory candidate. I say in a respectful
01:23 way to my friends who are Lib Dems and Greens, they can't win the mayoral election. If you
01:29 vote Lib Dem or Green it's one less for the Tory to receive. So I'm asking you to lend
01:33 me your vote. I worry should the Conservative win, we've seen in the last 14 years the cuts
01:40 the Conservatives have made around the country. My message to Londoners is do not allow the
01:46 Conservatives to do to London what they've done to the rest of the country. They've done