THE most successful project for youth rehabilitation and development in Africa that started at Southern Suburbs boxing club, Box Office, in 2006, has returned to its starting ground.
Fight with Insight, a programme for the youth, was started by Anton Gilmore and Luke Lamprecht to rehabilitate youth sex offenders. Sheri Errington joined as coach and research proponent and is the third partner.
To quantify that statement here are some stats regarding Fight with Insight.
In 2006 they started rehabilitating children of sexual crime that came through the criminal court system. One hundred and thirty boys were mentored and given a diversion programme which included boxing under Anton Gilmore.
There have been no repeat offences reported of all the children that were with the project. Considering one offender will offend 364 times in a lifetime and 40 percent of those go on to offend others, this translates into 50 000 cases of abuse stopped with a self-recurring 40 per cent re-offending.
Two research programmes were done by University of Cape Town and an independent group found that 40 per cent of the children stopped doing smaller crimes like underage smoking, drinking and bunking from school. Altogether 60 per cent started going to church and 70 percent improved their school marks.
The project migrated to Hillbrow for logistical reasons and in 2014 Luke suggested they open an open access gym to morally mentor the children before they made mistakes in life.
Since its inception they have trained 1 500 children, have 60 active fighters at the gym making it one of the biggest in the country with a 70 per cent win rate.
They even created a South Africa champion in the first four years.
They have started an autism boxing class and train children through Sheri at Tara Psychiatric Hospital with outstanding results. Box Office also trains psychiatric patients from the Talisman in the Hill.
In February this year Anton requested that the project reignites in the South as the endemic problems in Hillbrow are as severe in the South.
Since then they have grown a group of 30 young boxers learning life skills and boxing with six boys already graded to be fighters.
One boy has been gifted with t-shirt printing apparatus to help start a business as the next element of the programme is teaching entrepreneurial skills.
If boxers have a dual income stream or a job to fall back on they have a lower percentage of falling back into their old habit and becomes more confident in life.
The training at Southern Suburbs boxing club is free, on condition that the children offer two hours of community service on a Saturday after the boot camp training where cleaning of the streets from Comaro up to Verona streets and also help rehabilitate Suburbs Recreation Centre.
The times for training are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3pm to 4.30pm and Saturday from 8am to 11.30am.
Children receive an E-pap meal afterwards and also get life skills through SACAP and Anton.
If anyone wants to join us for boot camp on Saturday it is free and you can train with the children and see what life for them is like in the beautiful South.
Please contact Anton Gilmore on 083 653 0190 for more information.
