Evolution NOW Meets Boris Johnson!

(From left:) Mayor Of London Boris Johnson, Lem Leon & Ismael Hinds

It was a cold evening but there was a strange sense of excitement mixed with anticipation as Evolution NOW were in attendance for the Community Conversation. These conversations happen across London and tonight was the turn of Waltham Forest. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson was coming to town.

Strangely, the usual media circus was not present, there was no police and even more bizarrely, no searching occurred when we entered the building. As we took our seats we began to see the room fill out with residents from all corners of the borough.

Just because the cameras weren't present, it didn't mean there wasn't going to be a show tonight. The main focus of tonight was finding solutions to the problem of serious violence within the borough.

Edward Addison, CEO of Arrowhead Consultancy

Hosted by Edward Addison, CEO of Arrowhead Consultancy, the evening began smoothly, outlining the plan for the evening. Currently at Kings college in London, Mr. Addison is engaged in research into the social impact of young black men.

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson

Then Boris stood up to address us, letting us know that "all questions will be addressed" and reeling of his statistics that overall in London, the rate of crime has indeed risen in 2010 but injury rates with knives have fallen. This would be little comfort to the parents of the 14 year old boy who was stabbed to death in Leyton recently.

"It's not just about where the jobs are, it's about changing young people's mindset towards work." - Sheridan Mangal, Founder and CEO of SFM Capital Markets

Deputy Mayor of London, Richard Barnes believes change can occur through faith directives.

Boris then went on to promote his mentoring programme in which young black boys will be mentored to make better choices in their lives. The scheme isn't solely for this demographic but it is the main focus and the people they want as mentors are young black role models. Ismael had the privilege of speaking to one of the scheme's success stories, 16yo Leon Ward.

(From left) Ismael and Leon Ward

Ismael asked him what his perception of politics was.

He replied boring, it’s not really interesting. He then went on to say that it’s as though we can’t relate. People want to see the real side of politics rather than all the backstabbing, airing of personal lives and such irrelevant fluff.

As he said those words it was as though a light bulb went off in my head, what he said made perfect sense. One of the reasons why a lot of young people are not involved with politics, is because they feel as though they can’t trust the politicians. They just don’t have a figure to relate to.

For example David Cameron stating that he was going to fight for young peoples tuition fees. When in actual fact when he came into power he increased the tuition fees limit incredibly.

So in actual fact can we EVER really trust politicians?

With that in mind, Boris ultimately did try his hardest to promote the message of economic hope - making a world where young people from all walks of life can get jobs.

The most interesting quote of the evening came from the Mayor when he was offering his opinion on possible reasons as to why serious violent crime was so high:

" There IS a failure in parenting..." - Boris Johnson.