NASSA Celebrates 15 years of it’s award winning CABNAB work

Over 100 guests were in attendance at London’s City Hall yesterday, as NASSA celebrated the 15th anniversary of its award-winning CABNAB knife crime awareness initiative.

The ‘Carry A Basketball Not A Blade 15th Anniversary — The Next 100,000’ event showcased talks from some of the young people who have been educated by NASSA on the dangers of knife crime, county lines activity and gang culture since CABNAB was set up in 2008.

The initiative was established by NASSA player Anthony Okereafor after two of his friends were stabbed to death in east London parks within weeks of each other. Anthony had been playing basketball with NASSA when each incident occurred and realised it could have been him.

CABNAB talks and workshops were developed in partnership with the Metropolitan Police and are now delivered in all NASSA’s club and schools programmes, passing the 100,000 attendances milestone this year.

The City Hall event was attended by local dignitaries, including NASSA Patron Rt Hon Sir Stephen Timms, MP for East Ham, and Jeremy Rees, CEO of ExCeL London.

Members of the east London business community, included several from Canary Wharf, heard speeches from Sir Stephen, London Assembly Committee Member Unmesh Desai, and Darwin Bernardo of the Mayor of London’s Violence Reduction Unit.

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