A couple of weeks after my return from Rio I take the Docklands Light Railway from the City to North Woolwich, in the borough of Newnham. This is the unfashionable part of East London, a world away from skinny jeans of Shoreditch or the expensively illuminated monuments to finance that I have to pass to get here. Thanks to the regeneration on the neighbouring Royal Docks, it's also one of the areas set to benefit most from the London 2012 Olympics.
Fight For Peace's second academy opened here in 2007. Like the Rio academy, it operates on the five-pillar system, offering boxing, capoeira, Muay Thai, karate and gym sessions in return for attendance at personal development classes and education courses. Here I am met by the youth council, a group of young men and women aged between 14 and 22, who have volunteered to act as go betweens between members of the academy and the staff — and as charming and outgoing a group of young people as you could ever hope to meet.
While I've no doubt that each one if them is quite capable of holding their own within the ring, these are examples of what Luke Dowdney, Fight for Peace's founder, refers to as life champions, the charity's success stories outside of the sporting arena. All six of them have taken leadership courses, including classes on public speaking, and all of them bubble with excitement about their involvement with the academy - Michael, aged 14, who is being given extra help with his maths lessons, to Shakeela, aged 21, who is the first academy member to become a full-time employee and has just given a presentation for Comic Relief, one of Fight for Peace's backers in the UK, at British Airway's headquarters.
They tell me how some of them travel two hours each way several times a week to attend the academy, and how Fight For Peace has given them opportunities that were unavailable to them elsewhere — from support finding somewhere to live, to having made friends with people they would once have crossed the street to avoid. Each has a different story, but the words are the same: friends, family, support, discipline, confidence, trust.
'I used to speak badly to people,' Ismael, aged 19, originally from Portugal told me, 'I was stupid, because of problems I had at school, problems I had with my father, I used to be rude, and then I came here and I started to change. I got to meet a lot of people I wouldn't have met and go to places I would never gone.'
'If you don't come for a few days they'll ring you up and find how you are.' says Leslee, 20. 'They don't give up on you." And no matter where you are — in London or in Rio — that's got to be something worth fighting for.
To find out more visit about Fight for Peace visit fightforpeace.net.
Read Joanna Hunter's story on Roberto Custódio and Fight for Peace in Rio.
