A legacy of hope: Mail sponsors Stephen Lawrence’s charity’s drive to help disadvantaged youngsters follow top careers
- Mail will pay for two bursaries to help youngsters enter journalism
- Trust has already awarded nearly 100 architecture bursaries since its set up
- Stephen’s parents welcome Mail support in the case
By David Jones, Stephen Wright and David Wilkes
Last updated at 11:36 PM on 8th January 2012
Legacy: A charitable trust set up in the name of Stephen Lawrence has helped disadvantage youngsters achieve careers in architecture. Now the Mail will provide bursaries to aid youngsters enter journalism
From the appalling murder of Stephen Lawrence, a remarkable legacy of hope has been created in his name.
The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust already helps disadvantaged students into careers in architecture, the profession he dreamed of entering.
Now the Daily Mail is to sponsor two bursaries to give youngsters from deprived backgrounds the chance to succeed in journalism.
The new awards come as the trust expands its work into law, finance and media with its 18:18 Campaign, so called as it is launched 18 years after A-level student Stephen was murdered by racist thugs at the age of 18.
Yesterday Stephen’s parents Doreen and Neville welcomed the Mail’s support and, with Press practices currently being scrutinised by the Leveson Inquiry, highlighted the positive power of journalism at its best.
Mr Lawrence said: ‘At a time when some aspects of journalism are being criticised, I know from experience that the media can be a very powerful force for good in the world.
‘Without the support of newspapers – and in particular the Mail – it probably would not have been possible for us to get justice for Stephen, as we did finally last week, no matter how hard we tried.
‘By taking up our case and bringing it to the public’s attention, you helped us to expose the flaws in the police investigation and put them and the authorities under so much pressure that they had to right the wrongs they had done.
‘That is campaigning journalism at its best. We couldn’t have done it on our own because our voices would not have been heard. So it is fitting that the Daily Mail’s name will be linked with Stephen’s through these bursaries.
‘Secondly, newspapers have a vital part to play in helping people to understand and appreciate cultures and traditions other than their own. In that way they can break down barriers and bring people together. That is what I have tried to do in the 18 years since Stephen died.’
Long battle: Neville and Doreen Lawrence after the 1999 Macpherson inquiry. They have both welcomed the Mail’s support in their case
Since it was founded in Stephen’s memory in 1998, the trust has been changing lives for the better by helping those who otherwise might not fulfil their potential.
It has awarded nearly 100 architecture bursaries and so far eight students have gone on to qualify as architects while the others have succeeded in associated areas. Mr Lawrence said: ‘Journalism is one of those careers, like Stephen’s chosen career of architecture, which does not always attract young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
‘Many of these people cannot afford expensive college fees, and believe that it will be difficult for them to make progress in the competitive field of journalism, so they lower their aspirations and go into other types of work.
‘We need to train journalists who come from all walks of life to ensure we have a balanced press that represents every colour and creed in society, and the Daily Mail’s awards will help to ensure that this happens.’ With the recession biting, the trust is receiving fewer grants from public bodies so a major fund-raising drive is under way. Mrs Lawrence said: ‘I am so pleased with the Mail’s decision to sponsor two bursaries in Stephen’s memory.
‘The Daily Mail has consistently supported me and my family in our quest for justice. It is now helping me in continuing with Stephen’s legacy which I hope will be a long and lasting one.
‘With the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust I am determined to combat social injustice and to address the question of under-representation within the professions.
‘The Daily Mail’s support is a ringing endorsement of my hopes and aspirations and I urge others to support the trust.’
Mrs Lawrence refers to the students helped by the trust as ‘Stephens’. She explained the trust’s aims and ethos as ‘watering the seeds of ambition’.
‘We only take on young people who have that drive to make something of their lives,’ she said. ‘Then we work with companies to say, “Look, we will support this person”. We have proved it can be done with architecture.
‘Now it is time to send many more Stephens out into the world.’ She added: ‘To know the lives of others have improved because of my son is so precious. It reassures me that Stephen did not die in vain.
‘Stephen stood for equality, fairness and justice. His name should continue to enrich the lives of young people from all backgrounds with the same qualities.’ The trust – motto ‘Opening doors and opening minds’ – is based at the Stephen Lawrence Centre in Deptford, south-east London.
Helping hand: The charitable trust has already given 100 bursaries to people looking to become architects, including Nyamoi Fall Taylor, far left, and Thabiso Molobi, pictured far right
Among those it has helped is Thabiso Molobi, 25, a design engineer, who was brought up by his single mother on a council estate in Hackney, east London, and was given a £1,000 bursary.
He said: ‘My mum is on cloud nine – she always worried there were too many barriers in my way. She’s so very grateful to Doreen for knocking them all down.’
Nyamoi Fall Taylor, 22, who graduated from Kingston University last year and was granted £9,000 between 2008 and 2011, said: ‘The grant allowed me to go on amazing field trips to places like Japan which I could never have afforded alone. But it was the contacts that were even more valuable. I’m in a far better position than I ever would have been without Doreen.’
David Grant, the vocal coach and TV presenter who, with his wife Carrie, is an ambassador for the trust, said: There are other “Stephens” out there, other people who have the dreams, talent and ambition which he was denied by the events of that night 18 years ago. The trust offers them a beacon of opportunity. It tries to ignite a flame which says, “You can” rather “Here are the reasons you cannot”.’
The trust’s managing director Paul Anderson-Walsh said: ‘I’m thrilled that the Daily Mail will sponsor two journalism bursaries for the trust’s beneficiaries. It is great news.
‘The Daily Mail has proved that it doesn’t simply talk the talk, it walks the walk, and this commitment turns the rhetoric of fairness into reality of opportunity for the two young people who will benefit from this initiative.’
Another date will be added to the trust’s calendar this year with the inaugural Stephen Lawrence Criminal Justice Lecture.
Held in association with the Daily Mail, the speakers are Paul Dacre, the Editor of the Daily Mail, Lord Blair of Boughton, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and Baroness Scotland, the former Attorney General.
Soccer star turned pundit Garth Crooks will host the event at the law firm Freshfields’ Northcliffe Auditorium in Fleet Street on February 20, 2012.
The trust already holds its annual Stephen Lawrence Memorial Lecture for the Architectural Profession at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Previous keynote speakers have included the Prince of Wales.
Categories: News Tags: careers, charity's, disadvantaged, Drive, follow, Help, hope, Lawrence's, LEGACY, Mail, sponsors, Stephen, youngsters
Blair¿s torture legacy will cost Britain dear
By Daily Mail Comment
Last updated at 12:50 AM on 6th September 2011
The sickeningly cosy relationship between the Tony Blair government and the murderous Gaddafi regime has long been a stain on Britain’s conscience.
As this paper has consistently argued, the former Prime Minister was desperate for oil contracts and, in order to secure them, abandoned any remaining claim to be running an ‘ethical foreign policy’.
But, even given all we already know about the Machiavellian antics of this most slippery politician, the documents being unearthed in the ransacked offices of Gaddafi’s former torturer-in-chief, Musa Kusa, are deeply shocking.
Greased palms: Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was desperate to secure lucrative oil contracts with the Gaddafi regime
Indeed, they appear to provide evidence that, for all the carefully-worded denials, Britain’s security services, under Mr Blair, were complicit in the rendition of suspects to face certain torture overseas.
What other conclusion can be drawn from documents detailing how Abdel Hakim Belhaj – today, in a bitter irony, a senior rebel commander – was handed to Kusa’s thugs on the basis of intelligence provided by our security services?
MI6’s Sir Mark Allen (who now works for BP, which secured lucrative oil contracts in Libya ) even apparently wrote to Kusa obsequiously saying that rendering Belhaj was ‘the least we could do for you’.
Now, in a development which would be farcical if it were not so appalling, Belhaj may sue the UK for £1million compensation, thus punishing the Cameron government, which helped to topple Gaddafi, for the crimes of its predecessors.
The Prime Minister must also be wondering how warm his relationship with the new rebel government will be, given the UK’s emerging role in the ill-treatment of one of its senior figures.
Ultimately, the task of establishing the full extent of the Blair government’s complicity in torture rests with Sir Peter Gibson’s inquiry, which must not allow ex-ministers – as Jack Straw attempted yesterday – risibly to claim they were unaware of what MI6 was doing.
But, whatever Sir Peter concludes, one thing is certain: Mr Blair’s degrading relationship with Gaddafi will cost this country dear for years to come.
Yesterday, as MPs returned to work, another £49billion was wiped off shares in London amid news that the service sector had suffered its steepest one-month decline in growth for a decade.
The economy is now heading for the longest downturn in modern history.
Yet the Coalition – and the posturing LibDems in particular – have begun the new term at Westminster bogged down in petty point-scoring over NHS reform, free schools and abortion.
The government will stand or fall on its handling of the financial crisis. Ministers, also distracted by peripheral issues such as phone hacking in recent months, forget this at their peril.
Sleeping on the job: Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer
It’s deeply worrying that since 2009 – when the BBC and liberal establishment began a noisy pro-euthanasia campaign – Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer has quietly taken no action over 31 people suspected of helping another to end their life.
In that period, no one has been charged with such an offence and the suspicion is that a regime of legalised killing has been introduced by the back door, despite Parliament twice refusing to change the 1961 Suicide Act.
Every case has individual factors and must be examined on its merits rather than subject to what appears to be a blanket policy of turning a blind eye.
How a person ends their life defines our humanity. The law on it must be decided by Parliament — not a stitch-up between the chattering classes and an amenable DPP.
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