This is a shout out to anyone who thinks they don't have a choice. YOU are responsible for all your choices in life.
We did try to build a profitable company helping others in our community, employing others in our community and collaborating with other agencies in our community with the aim of giving young people in our community more choices. But NYCC decided against the idea. We are still looking into opportunities to market our bespoke Intranet monitoring and profiling tool developed to help young people see, experience and "own" their achievements in social, life, technical and academic skills. We're still hopeful that additional funding will be found to start all over again on another site not governed by the council. In the meantime we need to keep moving forward and stay positive.
I asked for help in the academic sector and have been granted the opportunity, against all odds, to greatly increase my skills studying Artifical Intelligence at the University of Leeds. I wanted to thank everyone involved in getting me there but also to everyone involved with KO2 for all their effort. I just hope, still, that it was not all in vain.
Featuring a soundtrack by legendary DJ Pete Tong and Paul Rogers and starring Noel Clarke, George Sargeant and Theo Barklem-Biggs, showcasing the best of the UK’s freerunning, skateboarding, BMXing and in-line skating talent and featuring urban art by Matthew Small, the short film "What If" is crazily no longer available it seems but the words still count.
BBC Films is in a unique partnership with FilmFour produced four short films for the Cultural Olympiad. What If is an inspirational film by successful directing duo Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini (Streetdance); the film is a Vertigo Films Production, a rendering of Rudyard Kipling’s much loved poem If; the film tells the story of Joe, a young teen who learns, through an older, wiser boy, fundamental life lessons on nobility, patience and generosity; lessons on how to become an admirable young man. Influenced by Wim Wender’s Wings Of Desire, this film is a celebration of urban youth culture and London
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
"Finding ways to bridge the divide WILL bring new innovation and efficiency to government AND open new markets and growth potential for startups".
The Local Government Ombudsman was asked to mediate in our dispute with North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) but have now claimed they are unable to act in our defence.
Alison Lowndes, Director of KO2: "I spent the past four years planning and bringing together collaborative forces within the community to build up KO2, set up as a 'Community Interest Company'. It has taken North Yorkshire County Council four months to destroy everything, including five full-time jobs".
Start-up investment was provided on condition of employment being created for the community in addition to the many benefits to the young people taking part in theactivities. The KO2 project was greatly assisted by North Yorkshire Police and the Youth Justice Services, who are currently looking for alternative routes for KO2 to be re-established since the programmes are critical to their own objectives, reducing the number of young offenders. The renamed Foremost School, a specialist facility for young people with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties (BESD) is still struggling to engage its small number of students and North Yorkshire County Council's Chief Executive is still refusing to allow KO2's bespoke programmes to operate until the situation is resolved.
"We honestly believed we could all simply work together" says KO2's Director but the council had other plans, forcing the head teacher and the majority of the Governing Board to immediately resign, refusing to work with the Children & Young Peoples Services department.
The County Council’s BESD Network Coordinator first offered support to KO2's alliance in 2009 but there has since been a distinct lack of collaboration from the CYPS. Risk Officers accused the KO2 team of “not knowing what they were doing” and initiated blocks on grounds of poor risk assessment. Later analysis by specialist consultant Dave Barham, who has over ten years' experience as a Local Authority Outdoor and Educational Visits Adviser for North Yorkshire County Council and Leeds Education Authority, suggested KO2 had “too much” in place and needed to consolidate the various risk management record documents into a nationally accepted format. KO2 then asked the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) themselves to assess their activities due to the current campaign to dispel myths of HSE preventing learning outside the classroom. The official response from the panel was that more should be done to enable KO2’s activities to proceed.
There is now a dirt track on the school site, built by KO2 with volunteers from the community and a platoon of army recruits provided by the Army Foundation College of Harrogate. However, NYCC is now refusing to allow KO2 access to the site, not even to complete training and gain accreditation for the dirt track and instructors from the governing body of motorcycle sport, the AutoCycle Union (ACU). Full cost recovery is being sought.
In the current economic climate local government should surely be supporting social enterprise and anyone with the ability to provide efficient solutions to community problems such as anti-social behaviour and the many other negative effects of long-term unemployment. The riots which took place in many English cities last year were a timely reminder of the dangers of ignoring the alienation of 'the lost generations". KO2 has a proven solution. North Yorkshire County Council has just destroyed the project. This is not exactly an encouraging example for the communities being asked by the government to support 'Big Society'.
Positive meeting today with North Yorkshire Police and the Youth Justice Services at the brand new Police HQ. These are two of our top level statutory supporters that have offered to help get KO2 operational. Its no surprise that after taking over, the Children & Young Peoples Services are still experiencing problems on site. If you cut off the Head the rest will fall. Losing a man responsible for the success of the Baliol School for over 11 years, prior to its relocation to Foremost, begs the question why the Assistant Director, ironically, of the Quality & Improvement department, believed himself a better leader than a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) who developed a Masters course in behaviour management, is highly experienced in Educational Leadership and a respected author (July 2011) of a thesis on the expectations of a head teacher in a school with serious weaknesses! The Baliol School was headed by a family team that understood the problems of the pupils and had spent years building relationships and trust with them.
All that is now gone.
The full KO2 website and intranet are now live while the battle continues to get operational. Our fantastic promo is here too thanks to Seth Gardner:
We are initiating full cost recovery from the County Council who, after letting us build their dirt track and secure their fleet of bikes, have now forbid us access to either. They have eliminated from the equation anyone we were collaborating with and taken charge of the new Foremost School.
I would like compensation for everyone who offered time and effort so KO2 could then help the kids of North Yorkshire who need it most.
Costs to be recovered include:
- Discount offered by the bike manufacturers to a Community Interest Company. Had they known a statutory organisation were buying the bikes for private use the price would have been almost £25,000 more.
- Voluntary assistance provided by local companies and community members. All this was abused days later as access to the dirt track they built was then blocked to remain private to the school, not for use by the community.
- 45 British Army recruits and staff, normally in training to fight for their Queen and country, spent 15 hard physical hours of labour, EACH, to build a dirt track for a county council, not for use by the community.
- 7 members of the community, 30 hours hard labour.
- Full cost of weekend hire of heavy plant machinery, tractors, quad, trailer, minidigger, fuel, labour by local companies
- Provision of 114 tonnes of sand at discounted price
- Provision of 120 tonnes of wood mulch at discounted price
The county council will no doubt spare no expense in putting a heavy-force legal team in its defense but they can't stop us from publishing details about these abuses of community spirit and volunteers.
Today we received a letter from the Chief Executive of North Yorkshire County Council saying that he could not allow us to help the young people of our community until they had stabilized the situation on site.
After almost the entire Board of Governors and the Headteacher resigned, refusing to work with the Children and Young Peoples Services department (CYPS), council are now attempting to manage the, luckily, small student population of The Foremost School, based at the old MoD landship site of Forest Moor.
Some original Baliol School staff remain with the relocated population but most have been unable to cope with delays and inadequate facilities causing excessive disruptive behaviour and obvious consequences, on top of an 80 mile commute. You can't blame them. I know staff who would like to throw chairs through windows so its not surprising some of the students are doing it too. What do they know, or even care, about interim Boards and divided middle management.
The dated department simply will not allow a lowly, yet innovative, resource-efficient Community Interest Company, to help, despite the fact they know we have a proven method that would help re-engage the students, and others from surrounding schools. They continue to delay our operations as they know we will eventually run out of start-up funding. They think at that point we'll disappear. This is because they don't understand the modern world and how we can run global networks on nil budgets with social media.
They have been successful, however, in putting 5 more people from the local area out of work. There have been many job losses due to funding cuts but this is different - we're a social enterprise - operating for the benefit of the community, for the benefit of the young people and also for the very county council who are blocking us.
The nonsensical response to months of negotiating, years of planning and even recent offers to work FREE OF CHARGE simply to prove our model, fortunately now results in the Local Government Ombudsman taking over. This is a fantastic opportunity to publicise the bullish tactics, the blatant lack of communication and determined lack of collaboration I've witnessed for over a year now. Certain department heads should be made accountable for decisions made that have neither the community nor the young people of North Yorkshire in their best interest.
We've all seen this inefficiency so much - even on a global scale. The Earth Summit is only weeks away when countries from all over will meet to discuss major sustainable development issues and possibly, 3rd time lucky, make some concrete agreements on the future of our planet. Neither Copenhagen nor Cancun put a dent in the egos of major powers, unable to give up power in order to commit to reductions. UK is still reeling from recession while powers are hoping the Jubilee will mask the low morale so we don't have another "London Riot" on our hands before the Parliamentary advice finally filters down to our local council that we need change - and NOW!
The main ePortal website is nearing completion now. KO2 will be onsite making preparations to our premises and the dirt-track during February 2012 and operational by March, when we'll have switched to the full site. Photos of the awesome new ZERO bikes and gear are now up on the FaceBook page.
THREE AND A HALF YEARS !!!!
Its been a long wait but finally we're getting there - about to sign a deal with the electric dirtbikes and then the investors can step-up allowing us to construct the dirt-track and fit out the classrooms and workshop. We're looking at a January start so Christmas is going to be busy but by far the most exciting for us all. Party invites being written right now ....
Reading Tim Loughton's Letter to VCS Organisations reinforces everything KO2 stands for; collaborative, radical reform for youth services. I've always been open to radical reduction in the amount of regulation... to place greater emphasis on direct work with children, young people and families.but its taken word from the top, via Professor Eileen Munroe, for that to actually filter down.
Further details on the Munroe Review are available here
Meanwhile planning continues on site with an environmental study underway and a full refit of the premises.
We hope to be operational by November 2011 with the Foremost School opening for business in January 2012.
A recent demonstration of the Quantya bikes took place in Pateley Bridge recently with council, Police, Youth Justice, AONB, PRS and Foremost representatives attending.
Ash did a brilliant job and many thanks to him and also Rob Montgomery from Quantya.
We're only just negotiating this superb resource but I'd like to pre-empt the arrival of KO2's newest instructor; Ashley Harland, 21 yrs old and a British Motocross Champion. Ash has been racing for 16 years and currently rides a Yamaha 450F though he prefers the old 2 stroke. He'll be gunning for the 2011 Maxxis if he can get the proper backing so get in touch if you want to back a top rider outside his community interest work with us.
Ash's fab achievements are all listed here on his site if you want more credentials. He's also a top joiner !!
I recently had a very positive meeting with the governing body of the new specialist school, Foremost, who we hope to be working alongside. While the wheels are in motion for us and for our partners we're also busy looking for investment. Clearly So of London has just joined up with the CIC Association making our investment search a lot easier - or at least supported! Hein Gericke also contacted us today with offers of support so its all looking sunny at the start of the new bike season. Ride safe and more to follow.....
AVIF was our introduction into the fantastic Third Sector - Big Society - which the country is only now, during recession, starting to realise its power in driving the economy.
The original idea was Kenya On 2 (wheels) - enduro biking tours, motorbike safaris around Kenya to promote the work we're doing there, generate revenue and get donations from clients visiting the actual projects. It hopefully will still include this but we're currently concentrating on KO2's UK-focused evolution into "Dirtbiking for Life".
776 youngsters entered the Criminal Justice system 2008-2009, in North Yorkshire, costing the UK £155 million. Kids with no support or safety net. If the UK had given these youngsters support it would have cost a quarter of that huge amount.
"Magic happens when you trust people" [Tim Smit of The Eden Project]
We're going to trust these kids, and support them, like people have supported me. We've just been offered bursary attendance at the high profile, Good Deals UK Social Investment Conference in London. We may well get a chance to pitch for investment but either way its bizarrely being held at the Institute of Engineering and Technology's (IET) amazing Savoy Place. The IET are the very people backing the electric powertrain technology that drives the electric dirtbikes we'll be using. My involvement in the TTXGP zero emissions race on the Isle of Man at the TT last year introduced me to various members of the IET who can, hopefully, help us to use the technology to re-engage these kids.
This "Big Society" that KO2 is a part of, something business and the UK government have finally recognised, has a viral power that purely-profit-driven business never had. At the same time as we're helping the kids in my own community, we're also helping the kids in Kenya and all the volunteers from around the globe, involved in our sustainable development projects. We're simultaneously cutting the costs of crime in the UK by a quarter, we're helping deliver the outcomes of the "Every Child Matters" initiative, we're re-engaging youth back into education, teaching them life skills, IT skills and self worth....
.. and we're teaching basic maintenance in a brand new, career-creating, green powertrain technology, enabling the next generation to go forward and make a difference of their own, even develop their own social enterprises?
Wish us luck for a Good Deal!
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