£500k to help end misogyny in classroom

Cash will fund workshops to educate 13 and 14-year-old inner city pupils about healthy relationships.

- David Cohen

THE Evening Standard today launches our Show Respect campaign, an initiative to tackle violence against girls, by funding workshops about healthy relationships in schools.

We are following the evidence as to what works in reducing youth violence by deploying £500,000 from the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund to get the ball rolling.

We will be funding a group of charities and community interest companies to deliver workshops to 13 and 14-year-olds in schools across deprived areas of London. Last week we published our investigation into violence against girls in which we spoke to teenage boys and girls and revealed that:

• Sexual harassment is a daily occurrence for many girls.

• Boys aged as young as eight access pornography.

• Inappropriate images of schoolgirls are regularly shared on mobile phones.

• Girls feel unsafe walking in their local area.

• “Rating” girls and posting on social media has become normalised.

• The messages of toxic influencer Andrew Tate — including that it is okay to choke women and “girls are subservient” — have had a huge impact on the psyches of young men.

Our investigation began with a single question: what would it take to end — or dramatically cut — violence against women and girls? We put this to violence reduction guru Jon Yates, head of the Youth Endowment Fund, an organisation given £200 million by the Government five years ago to examine the evidence as to which interventions work in preventing violence to young people. Yates was clear about the interventions that the evidence shows “do not work”. More CCTV, better street lighting and anti-bullying programmes are all found to have a low estimated impact on violent crime or “no effect”.