‘KO Racism’ in boxing

October 7, 2018 | by Matt Halfpenny

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The ‘KO Racism’ campaign delivered the first of its social media awareness workshops at several educational venues in the South in September and October.

Shah Rahman, co founder of the campaign (Limehouse Boxing Academy) was pleased with the response from students from both within boxing and outside the sport.

” We have just delivered our workshop to students at Brighton college, Bow School and Spotlight youth centre in East London and it’s been received really well.” said Shah

” The workshop is an hour and a half long and it involves a 30 minute interactive powerpoint and discussion and an hour long boxing session. The aim of the workshop is to show young people what a fantastically diverse sport boxing is while at the same time warning them of the perils that they can fall into following, liking and posting from extreme sites on line and particularly social media. ”

” It really made us think about how we use social media ” said Joe Tindall,18, who attended the workshop at the Spotlight youth centre. ” It told us how multi cultural boxing is and how we should ‘pause before we post’ things that might have a damaging effect.”

Fellow Limehouse coach and ‘KO racism’ campaign founder, Mark Collings , also thought the workshops were a success.

“We received some statistics from a government organisation that said young people – aged from 10 – 18 – are, on average, online each week for around 20 hours. Most of that time is spent on social media. We also got another statistic that says 94% of employers will check the social media profile of a perspective employee and particularly young people starting out. What we want to do with these workshops is use boxing to engage young people and educate them on the misuse of social media. The sort of misuse, following and liking extreme and destructive views, that can potentially have an effect on finding a job and a university place. We think sport and particularly boxing can play a big part in educating young people as they are often more willing to listen to a sports coach than most people. We feel that boxing coaches and people with an ongoing audience with children have a big part to play in setting examples and educating. We have spoken to 50 or 60 students in September both boxers and non boxers and at the same time given them a fun boxing session. We have more schools and colleges to visit before christmas and then we hope to role it out across the country next year.”