Colm Walsh from our Criminology team joined with a regional community work umbrella body, Youth Work Alliance, earlier this year to adapt a Queen’s University participation framework for young people. The Common Purpose for Violence Prevention was funded by Children in Need and saw 40 young people from four communities across Northern Ireland trained first as peer researchers, and then further supported to design, implement and then evaluate their own violence prevention projects. Colm said: “Our research has consistently shown that children and young people are most likely to be impacted by violence, and yet, few frameworks have been robustly tested to allow young people to understand and respond to the root causes themselves.”

The project ended in October 2023 and was featured on the annual Children in Need show on the BBC on 19 November. The Chief Executive Officer from Youth Work Alliance commented on the social impact of the project: “Working with Queen’s has been a game-changer for how to support young people to take on leadership roles in this area.”