Serena Wiebe is a campaigner, and boxing coach and mentor at Empire Fighting Chance. On Monday 9 September, she attended the first annual Knife Crime Summit at Downing Street:
Knife crime has impacted me in ways I can’t explain. It’s forced me to grow up and deal with situations I shouldn’t have had to deal with at such a young age.
I’m 20 now, but I’ve been losing friends constantly since I was 17. When I hear someone has been stabbed, I think: oh my god, is it someone in my family? Is it one of my friends?
Imagine you losing your child or your friend to a knife, and how damaging that is. Imagine not being able to see them again because their life has been taken from them by someone else. That has become my reality, it’s what I am used to now.
I originally started working with Empire Fighting Chance because my brother took his own life. We’re a charity which uses non-contact boxing to inspire young people to reach their full potential, and my journey with them started because I wanted to help young people who were in the same situation as him, and me.
Over time, I began losing more and more people in my life to knife crime. But the trigger for me was losing Eddie, one of my best friends growing up.
Eddie King Muthemba Kinuthia and I had been friends since we were three years old. We were always together. We went to the same nursery and primary school. For a while we went to the same secondary school. As we got older, we drifted slightly, but the love was still there.
He was a really kind person; everyone in our community knew him, and they knew him for the right things. Ever since he died, so many people he knew have tried to honour him in some way, because he was such an important person to so many, and such a good role model.
To have to speak about him in the past tense is crazy. I still can’t believe that he’s gone.
We’re still seeking justice for Eddie, but after losing him I thought, okay I need to do something. This is getting out of hand. I don’t want to see another person I love die.
Since then, I have continued to work with Empire and deliver boxing lessons for free every week to young men who may be involved in knife crime, drug dealing, or any situation that could lead to those things happening.
I work with various organisations which enable me to speak with young people about their experiences with the system and crime and what they would like to change, and I am starting my own youth group, where we come together every fortnight and talk about what we want to change, which I hope can grow and develop over time.
I believe we’re not hearing from young people enough.
We need to be inviting young people to events like today, to places like Downing Street, so they know that their voices are heard. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have been given, but we need to give more young people the platform to share their views.
Attending events like the Knife Crime Summit will help – even being invited has probably changed my life. If I look back to five years ago, I could have gone down a very different path where I was involved in knife crime.
A lot of the young people I work with ask me: “How did you go from there to where you are today?”
Just inviting one young person like me here could have a domino effect on other young people.
I believe it’s important for the right legislation to be in place – that change is good – but we need to focus on immediate action. It’s getting to the point where someone is dying every day.
In my opinion, it’s also about the little things we can do that don’t cost money. Around that table today there were so many role models – Idris Elba, the Prime Minister, loads of MPs – and it is so important to see them supporting organisations like mine, because it can inspire young people.
I was a young person who didn’t believe that I could do anything. Then I met Marvin Rees, who was Mayor of Bristol at the time, and Martin Bisp, the Chief Executive of Empire. They are the reason I am here today.
They showed me that I can come to places like this, I can speak about issues like this, and I can have that domino effect on other young people who feel they don’t have a voice.
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