What is Our Aim?
Here at West London Travel Program (WLTP) we aim to help students combat anxiety around travelling in West London and build valuable inter-school connections through doing so. Each member is placed into a group with other students in the same year from nearby schools who live locally in order to give everyone a person to travel with. Groups by our volunteers and we aim to help students build their own friendships, and travel plans together. Schools we are currently planning on initially aiming our project towards include: Godolphin and Latymer, Latymer Upper School, St Paul’s Girls School and St Paul’s School. (We have gotten in touch and are eagerly awaiting responses). Currently our services only operate in Hammersmith, but we hope to expand and reach students all across London!
Area of Concern
Safety is something that is an increasingly prominent issue in London and has also impacted us personally. We want to raise awareness of challenges people are facing and our personal experiences (the following incidents are real examples of things we have experienced and we have reported them as true to the story as possible):
1. (Date: October 2024) We were cycling down the main road, coming back from rowing, before being circled by two men on lime-bikes with balaclavas, trying to steal our bikes and phones. Unprepared, we were unsure what we should do and what would happen to us so we ran and stopped a trusted adult in the street and waited for help.
2. (Date: October 2024, 1 week later) I was coming home from school with a friend and waiting at the bus stop. Having just missed the bus, after running to try to catch it, we were tired and unfocused, and nobody was around us. Suddenly, we heard a loud noise behind us. Before we could move, we were surrounded by 10 young men with fireworks, which they proceeded to throw at shop-fronts and onto roads. Scared, we ran into a nearby office and waited until our parents came to pick us up.
We have already begun to share our story, by organising assemblies, telling fellow peers, and spreading valuable information on what to do in these situations. But this is not enough to solve the problem. After sharing our experiences, and listening to our classmates’, it became clear that these were not rare occurrences (see definitive survey data below). Many have come forward with similar stories to ours, almost all taking place around the area of Hammersmith and Fulham, where both our incidents happened and where we are planning to help combat the issue. Through discussions, we have seen many people push real experiences away, claiming ‘it’s normal’ and something we ‘have to deal with’ when living in London. However, in our opinion, we should all have the right to feel safe in our own area, and our safety should never be something being pushed away.
Furthermore, through additional research, we found out that 44% and 24% of teenage girls and boys, respectively, in Greater London and London, according to BBC News, feel regularly unsafe on the streets. Whilst this percentage is not as high as the one we collected, it shows how there are many people in similar positions to us all over London, not just in local schools and areas. We also discovered there were no charities focussed towards this safety issue, the nearest ones being Streets of Growth, and Brake, which are based on crashes rather than street safety. We want to tackle this issue because it is important for it to be addressed and for measures taken to help prevent further incidents so that students gain confidence when on their own while travelling. Through a separate survey we sent out, focussed on the issue of a lack of interactions between schools (in which 145 students responded), only 9% felt that they interacted sufficiently with a mixture of students from different schools.
Feeling unable to forge new relationships as they are not provided with the opportunities is the unfortunate reality for many secondary school students in London, but feeling unsafe and at risk when on the streets in London is an even more prominent issue that we felt we needed to also address. Both these issues stem from a lack of confidence with students, so our aim is to provide secure and fun opportunities for students to develop their confidence, both in going home, and making new friendships, whilst learning about possible risks and preparing them to travel safely and confidently.