Sunday, June 21, 2009

Prince William meets former gang members


PRINCE WILLIAM has disclosed for the first time how he held private meetings with former gang members and learnt valuable lessons from them.

In his first major newspaper article Prince William writes about how gang members are striving for respect. He says the challenge the country faces is "how to turn gang members into team members".

Last week three men were found guilty of murdering Ben Kinsella, 16, after chasing him down a London street in order to restore "respect" after one of them was humiliated in an earlier fight.

Prince William, who celebrated his 27th birthday on Saturday, wrote in London's Sunday Telegraph: "Former gang members have told me that it is precisely to find status, respect from others and the role in a community that we all crave that led them to fall in with gangs in the first place.

"One enduring feature of all gangs - and teams - is that they survive on mutual support. They allow their members to earn respect by obeying the rules, and they share clear objectives.

"Essentially, they allow the individual to belong. As such, the fundamental difference - so far as I can see - between violent street gangs and cohesive teams of contented young people is the destructive violence of the former set against the constructive comradeship of the latter. The challenge, therefore, seems to me to be how to turn gang members into team members."

Prince William has never forgotten his experiences as a young boy being taken by his mother to visit homeless youngsters and hearing their stories. Diana, Princess of Wales, was insistent that the future king should meet disadvantaged people and obtain an insight into their troubled lives.

Similarly, the Prince of Wales actively encouraged his elder son to observe - and one day help - problem youngsters.

Even as a teenager, Prince William took an active interest in the Prince's Trust, his father's 33-year-old charity that helps 40,000 disadvantaged youngsters a year.

Aides say that Prince William, who is a flight lieutenant in the RAF, has met former gang members through his links to two charities, Centrepoint and the St Giles Trust.
**************************************************************************************
In Malaysia IGP Musa Hasan share the loot and protects the underground big boss.

No comments:

Zahid's land corporation proposal is insidious, unfeasible

  One proposal announced by no less than Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi went relatively unnoticed at the recently concluded  Anwar...