Camden News: Ibrahim Isse | Somali Youth Development Resource Centre (SYDRC) | Pan London Somali Youth Conference | Integration

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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 29 May 2008

Mohamed A Abdullahi

‘Wider society must reach out to Somali community’

“THE wider society have a problem reaching the Somali community – they call them an invisible community, a hard-to-reach community.”
For Ibrahim Isse, project co-ordinator of the Somali Youth Development Resource Centre (SYDRC) the shootings of two Somali teenagers could not be allowed to overshadow the largest-ever gathering of community leaders at the Pan London Somali Youth Conference in Holborn on Tuesday, which he had spent months organising.
“We are here to discuss the lack of opportunity available to the young people,” he said. “They leave school without qualifications and there is nothing for them to do except get involved in anti-social behaviour and crime. There are simply not enough resources available.”
The Camden-based SYDRC is behind some of the most positive efforts at integration taking place in London, as the presence of Camden’s council leader Keith Moffitt at the conference showed, Mr Isse said.
But an underlying tension is shown by the fact that only last week 14 members of a largely Somali gang, the TMS, were the subject of Asbo action by the council and police who accuse them of drunkeness and drug-dealing in Camden Town.
For many conference members, the issue is one of generational break-down. “There was a trigger waiting to be pulled,” said Mohamed A Abdullahi, chairman of the UK Somali Community Initiative.
“We have single parents, we have fathers who don’t care about the problems. They are pushing the young people to this stage.”

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