Jamal Edwards, founder of SBTV, opens youth centres in Acton, West London
You will probably know Jamal as the founder of SBTV, a platform that gave talented young people the opportunity to succeed (such as Ed Sheeran) and racked up millions of views in the process! The entrepreneur is now having even more of an impact in the streets as he has opened a number of youth centres in London, acting as a safe place for kids to go to after work and hopefully develop the skills that they cannot practice in school.
There will be 4 youth centres which will be located across Acton, a place in West London where Jamal grew up.
“For me it’s really important. Just having a safe space to go to outside of school and your home. And a lot of the centres have been closed down so if I can try and help and I had a youth centre when I was younger, I want to try and set these kids up to have the best possible start that they can have.”
I feel that it is important to note just how this was made possible as the journey has come round in a full circle! The success of SBTV seems to be mostly due to Jamal’s work ethic & vision, but it may not have even started if he didn’t take part in a film course at a youth centre in his teen’s.
After finding his passion at the centre and then mastering his craft on the streets, the entrepreneur shed light on some of the biggest names in UK music history. This success led to Jamal connecting with very influential figures such as Richard Branson. It is this belief and trust in the SBTV founder that seems to have really helped to kickstart his project as Google and the Wellcome Trust helped to fund the youth centres.
So far, almost 200 people have been involved in the project (which began 30 weeks ago), proving that it has been a success so far!
Hopefully this starts a chain reaction of investment into the future and wellbeing of young people as the knife crime rates alone shows that something needs to change, so thank you Jamal for continuing to provide more opportunities for young people.
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