A project bidding for money to tackle serious violence in Kirklees will feature motivation, well-being and self-defence sessions.

Forner martial arts world champion Rebecca Kane runs New Direction Services to empower women and girls across Kirklees with a range of options including self-defence and kickboxing, dance combat and well-being support.

There is £100,000 available money from the Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin’s People’s Fund and several projects will be vying for the money in a series of ‘You Decide’ events with the Huddersfield one today (Thursday, May 21).

Those projects receiving the most votes will see funding of up to £10,000 to deliver their plans. The money has come from cash recovered from criminals.

The Kirklees event is being held Northfield Hall in Norfolk Avenue, Sheepridge, from 5.45pm to 9pm.

The New Direction Services bid is a programme which includes 225 kickboxing and self-defence sessions, 52 motivational dance combat sessions and 52 wellbeing sessions including mental health support and addiction recovery guidance.

There will also be outreach in six schools and community centres focusing on healthy relationships, confidence and a growing peer support network.

Rebecca said: “New Directions delivers a blended programme of physical empowerment, emotional support and early intervention education.’’

There are also hopes to potentially include some anti-knife crime sessions which would be led Mark Reynolds who used to run Rawthorpe Boxing Club and uses boxing and mentoring to steer youngsters away from violence and knife crime.

Mayor Brabin (above) said: “Our People’s Fund is giving local communities the resources they need to turn their ideas into action.

“We want people to have their say on what will make their community safer so I’m urging you all to come down and get involved.

“As we invest this money recovered from criminals back into our communities we can prevent more lives being lost to the scourge of serious violence.”

All submissions will address serious violence whether that’s knife crime, gangs, organised crime or violence against women and girls.

To attend the Huddersfield event sign up HERE.

For anyone unable to attend they can register their vote by emailing consultation.pc@westyorks-ca.gov.uk and if they want to vote for Rebecca’s project it’s the New Direction Services CIC project.

Written by ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging, website content, copywriting and ghost-writing autobiographies.