Active Change Foundation: Changing lives for the better
The Qadir Brothers and Mike have been working together since 2003 to bring about greater social cohesion in their community - and beyond - to prevent the spread of extremism. The Active Change Foundation (ACF) was established as the mechanism to facilitate this positive change. As a result of their past personal experiences of street crime and the lure of violent extremism, the ACF team have a unique, in-depth knowledge of the social, cultural and faith issues that need addressing in this task.
Disengagement from civil society; lack of opportunity; anti-social behaviour; gun, knife and gang crime, and violent extremism are all facets of the challenge facing urban communities in the twenty-first century. ACF is in direct, personal contact with the disaffected members of their community, we therefore work effectively to build bridges between such groups and mainstream UK society. This is vital to achieving their objective since disaffected, usually young, members of the community are beyond the reach of local authorities, charities and other agencies.
'Chaos management’ is the term that ACF uses for dealing with disorder in disaffected communities. There are three separate elements involved in dealing with this ‘chaos’:
- Recognition of the reality of the problem
- Adoption of a change-strategy tailored to the particular nature of the problem, and the varied needs of those involved.
- Transformation of the individuals involved by the employment of diversion techniques, de-programming and personal intervention
This unique approach, driven by an in-depth knowledge of the mindset of vulnerable young people, is extremely effective in dealing with the particular social, cultural and security issues that UK society now faces.
ACF was set up as a charitable trust in January 2008 in order to create stronger links with government authorities for fund raising purposes and to influence policy on a national level. Charity Registration No. 1125970